Homemade Play Dough (with link to recipe)

Recently, I found this great recipe for making homemade play dough. There are easier recipes, to be sure (not that this one is difficult), but the extra step of cooking the dough really makes it feel like the brand name, Play-Do!

After making it, I stored it in these containers I bought at the Dollar Tree back when Bunny was still eating my homemade baby food.  Bunny just LOVED the containers! She named all the animals and tried to take the tops off.  Then, when we took the dough out, she enjoyed pushing it back in and closing the containers more than actually squishing it and playing with it!

That is, until I started making her favorite Sesame Street characters!

Yes, I know, he doesn't look like much, but this is my rendition of Big Bird from memory...and it suited Bunny fine, as she started yelling, "Bee Bird, Bee Bird!"

After that, we started making letters and then she realized that she could ask me to make her things so she'd say, "Make frog? Pease" or "Make Elmo? Make Ernie?" I gladly obliged, of course!

She liked playing with the characters which meant that their eyes, noses, and beaks fell off and she got to practice her hand/eye coordination by putting it back.  Now, you may not know this but Bunny is very VERY advanced in speech.  She regularly speaks in full (albeit short) sentences and even uses the correct personal pronouns most of the time.  I have two friends who are speech therapists and they're flabbergasted by her advanced speech at only 18 months.  Well, I think she's just advanced all around because her little fingers have lots of dexterity and she shocked me by how well she could replace eyes and noses that fell off her favorite monsters!

Then, I taught her how to roll the dough to make letters which she proudly identified for me. (She can say most of her letters now, did I mention she's amazing???)

And the letter rolling turned into making a snake.  She loved the little snake.  She dragged him around and gave him sweet little "tisses!" (kisses)

When I made her a very poor rendition of Ernie, she made the snake give him kisses.  She said, "Tisses, tisses, Ernie.  Muah!" (Sorry, the picture sort of cuts Ernie off)

All in all, I have to say that the homemade play dough was not only an inexpensive playtime solution, but a very fun one that sparked a lot of creativity in Bunny. You should try the recipe out for yourself.  If your children are old enough, at least 8 or so, you can even let them stir the play dough because you don't heat the stove very high.