How To Make Playdough
As the autumn draws in and half term nears, indoor activities for kids take centre stage, offering a fun and creative way to beat the chill and keep boredom at bay.
One of our favourite indoor kids activities is making homemade playdough. It's safe, simple, and super easy to do. You can learn how to make playdough with our five-step playdough recipe and get inspiration for some cool playdough creations to try once it's made.
How Can You Make Playdough?
Making playdough is a perfect rainy day activity. It’s budget-friendly, too. All you need is flour, salt, water and vegetable oil - and a couple of drops of food colouring if you want to make it pop in bright shades.
Here, we’ve shared how to make homemade playdough in five simple steps.
Easy Playdough Recipe
There are lots of easy recipes for playdough out there, but this no cook playdough recipe is our favourite. Before you get started, change your littlen into their cute spotty Chef's Set to avoid grandma’s beautifully handmade jumper getting decorated in splodges of food colouring!
Playdough Recipe UK:
Ingredients
8 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp salt
60ml warm water
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Food colouring
Method
Step 1
Stir the flour and salt into a large bowl.
Step 2
In a separate bowl, mix together the water, vegetable oil and food colouring (a few drops is all you’ll need).
Step 3
Pour the water into the flour mix and stir to create a dough.
Step 4
Sprinkle some flour onto your work surface and knead the dough for a couple of minutes until smooth.
Step 5
To prevent it from drying out, store your playdough in an airtight container in the fridge.
And that’s it! Once the DIY playdough is ready, your tiny tot can use these handy Modelling Tools to design their own creative masterpiece.
What can you make out of playdough?
There are loads of things you can make with playdough, be it a pizza complete with all the toppings or a zoo home to lots of modelled animals. Here are some fun playdough play ideas to inspire you:
- Animals: Sculpt different animals like snakes, turtles, or fish
- Food: Create pretend pizzas, cookies, or ice cream cones
- Letters & numbers: Roll out dough to form the alphabet or numbers
- Shapes: Press or mould basic shapes like circles, squares, and triangles
- People: Craft simple figures with easy accessories like hats or scarves
- Flowers & plants: Design playful flowers, trees, or even entire gardens!
- Buildings: Stack and mould playdough to build houses, towers, or castles
- Monsters: Let imaginations run wild by creating funny or scary monsters
- Jewellery: Make pretend rings, necklaces, or bracelets with moulds
- Vehicles: Mould cars, boats, or airplanes for pretend play
What are the benefits of playing playdough?
Playdough activities are bursting with benefits. Playing with playdough is a fantastic way to encourage imaginative play and expose kids to new textures, while honing their fine motor skills and creativity. Even better, if you choose to make handmade playdough, this will be especially rewarding for them as they’ll gain a sense of achievement from creating something from scratch.