Homemade playdough

R and I had a fun time making playdough this past week. We used a recipe from a craft book we have but there are TONS of recipes out there.

We used:

2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon cream of tartar

The recipe recommends slowly adding the water to just the flour and salt mixture-I just dumped everything in and stirred alot over medium low heat. I stopped cooking when the mixture was hard to stir, then let it cool for awhile in the pot. I then scooped the dough out and put it on waxed paper to finish cooling. The dough still felt sticky to me so I sprinkled some corn starch on it and kneaded it in.
From there I added a little orange essential oil for fragrance and hopefully preserving. I separated the dough into 4 parts and added food coloring. R chose which colors except for orange-that was my idea.
The results were great!! Well, except for the orange which looks kinda like pureed pumpkin- not what I was shooting for.
This could be a great lesson for ratios, measuring, color blending, and the science behind how heating a mixture of liquid and powder makes a solid mass.
Playing with our creation was even more FUN.