Play dough Easter Eggs- Sorting Big, Medium and Little Eggs

During the week we decided to have an Easter Egg sale! Little Boo mentioned doing her play dough cake stall so I suggested because it was Easter that we make an Easter egg stall instead.  She was really keen so we set to work making the Play dough Easter Eggs to sell to her customers. Little Boo had a great time decorating the eggs with buttons and some sparkly gems. 

We then set up the stall and Little Boo sorted out the eggs into Big, Medium and Little sizes.  We made labels for the prices which Little Boo was keen to cut out and trace over the writing. 

Then the customers came to buy their eggs! 

Using play-dough to learn to spell names

I wanted to share this with you today as it combines all the things that Little Boo likes at the moment: play dough, stamps and her name.  We have used stamps (Melissa and Doug Alphabet stamps) to make an impression of the letters for her name. Then we used the play dough to make the letters out of the spaghetti that Little Boo made using one of her play dough toys.

 Another way to learn the letters is to write into the play dough with a pen something that Little Boo did yesterday with the microwave salt dough.

Playing with Play food, play-dough and the toy kitchen

Little Boo loves playing with her kitchen and the other day she started to play with this her play dough and her play food.  I made some baking trays up really simply using some cardboard and wrapped foil around it. Little Boo thought that this was fantastic and started to place loads of foods on the baking trays.

She later decided that she wanted to make egg on toast and loved it when I placed the egg inside the pan for her to cook. I then showed her how to use a fish slice to place the egg onto the plate.  This is the kind of activity that she can not do in the real kitchen due to safety so it is wonderful for Little Boo to practise in a safe way. 

 We also cooked some spaghetti

 Little Boo then decided that she wanted to feed her dolly the food.  This was a great way for her to practise her skills with a knife and folk. 

Here is part of the feast for dolly. 

Exploring portraits with toddlers

Today we decided to look at faces! Yesterday we had a great experience in art gallery looking at  portraits there so I decided this would be a good idea for today.  The art gallery had a room in which sculptures could be felt. This allowed us to explore the faces more.

At first we looked at the art work available on the BBC website the idea behind this website is that 200,000 paintings will be digitised so that they can be made more accessible and enjoyed.  The brilliant thing is, is that the images have been tagged and therefore easy to search by what is in the painting.  This makes the website a brilliant resource and so easy to use! simply searching the word "portrait" gave us loads to look at.

Little Boo decided that she wanted to use some Play-dough so I made up a massive batch of cooked play-dough.  I put loads of different items out for her to use to create the faces these included

• Googly eyes
• Gems
• Dry pasta
• Dry spaghetti
• Pipe cleaners
• Straws
• Lollipop Sticks 
• Scissors
• Bottle Tops

We have done our funny faces activity.  I have done this before with Little Boo and she loves it, it also helps her to know the places where the eyes, nose and mouth go on the face.  This activity is really easy to get ready as all that is needed is some magazines and then you just cut out the eyes, noses, mouths and hair.

We had a go at using some play-dough mats that are available at twinkl these worked really well and Little Boo enjoyed making them. 

This one is Daddy! 

It has been fun doing all about faces and incorporates an element of maths as Little Boo started talking about how many eyes there should be. 

Playdough sweet and cake shop

 We have had a fantastic time with home made play dough.  I have just had to share this with you as Little Boo loved this and keeps asking to do it again.  I made up three massive batches of play dough Strawberry, Lemon and Chocolate.  The recipes that I used were from the Nurturestore and the Imagination tree blogs. 

Non-cook recipe

• 1 1/2 cups boiling water 
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar

Add your choice of colours and essence for this activity we added strawberry and lemon.

For Chocolate play dough

• 2 cups boiling water 
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• drop of glycerine 

Place all the ingredients in a bowl and stir, stir, stir! When it starts to get too difficult to stir place it on the counter and knead.  At this point please be careful as I realised that the play dough is still quite hot (I was too keen)

The chocolate has a brilliant consistency.  I think it is the glycerine so I am going to try and add this to a cooked playdough next time.

I also tried cooked play dough (Strawberry) for the first time and I am loving this! it is so much better in my eyes but this may just be a personal thing.

Cooked play dough 


2 cups of water
2 cups of plain flour
1 cup salt
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons cream of tartar

Place all the ingredients together in a pan and heat over a low heat.  Keep stirring and do not leave the pan unattended this happens quite quickly.  Before the mixture starts to solidify stir in the colour it is easier to do it at this stage than later on.  After a few minutes the mixture solidifies take it out the pan leave to cool then knead and play!

Here is how it went

We had lots of interesting items out for Little Boo to explore with including our bottle tops.  They make great cakes! 

Making a lollipop

This is a Birthday cake with the candles.

Squashing the playdough into a chocolate tray. 

Little cake with cherry on the top

Up-cycle bottle tops to great playdough cakes. 

After all the cakes and sweets were made Little Boo had to start getting ready for bed. Luckily she asked to play with playdough the next day and asked to repeat the activity that is when we made our cake shop.

Little Boo was shop keeper and Daddy came shopping and wanted a lollipop.

Little Boo was then the customer whilst Mommy was shop keeper.

It was great fun making the sweets and cakes and then even more fun seeing how much Little Boo loved the shop idea.  The shop encouraged a lot of conversation as Little Boo responded to Mommy and Daddies cake orders and used great descriptive words for the different cakes.  Number can also be incorporated as we asked for "two cakes" for example and
talked about how much it would be it was very funny as everything was "seventy pence", I do not even know where she has got the number seventy from? It is amazing how children pick things up.  For older children the activity could be extended as they could put the price tags on the items and actually add the prices themselves then select the correct coins to pay.

The playdough itself was a wonderful sensory experience as they are all had different smells, chocolate is my favourite.  It smells amazing. 

Play dough Monster!

We have had some great fun this evening Little Boo wanted to play with Play dough so decided to make monsters. It is amazing how fun this can be and so simple! all you need is Googly eyes, Pipe cleaners or straws and Play Dough (Home made or brought). Hope that you enjoy this.

Sweet shop use for chocolate box

Thank you to the Imagination Tree for inspiration for making Lemon and Chocolate Play dough.  I was looking for how to use the chocolate boxes that I have in the recycling items and came across this!

The smell was amazing for both of the play doughs used and the fact that it is no cook meant that Little Boo could join in with the stirring! The ingredients needed are below all that is needed is to put them in a big bowl together and stir.

Playdough
1 cup of salt
2 cups of plain flour
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp cream of tartar
1.5 cups of boiling water
2 drops of glycerine
for chocolate playdough add half cup of cocoa powder and for lemon playdough add yellow food colouring and lemon flavouring.  


The activity was really fun and little Boo got especially excited with putting the pretend chocolates in the chocolate tray.  She also enjoyed decorating the lemon cakes with little beads and candles counting them as she placed them in.
I hope that you can all have a go at this activity it is a real good rainy day activity. Great thing is that the play dough will keep for a few weeks in the fridge in a sealed container.