This natural play dough recipe will provide hours of fun and entertainment for kids! Just add some eco-friendly flower confetti and you have a beautiful nature invitation that kids will return to over and over again. Play dough is the perfect sensory and fine motor tool that offers many learning opportunities, so make some in your home today for your children or students!
I LOVE making my own play dough! It’s so simple, inexpensive, and I find the process so calming.
I’ve been using this recipe for a few years now, so I guess it’s time to share it here:) This natural play dough is made with non toxic ingredients and is taste safe!
We love to add bits of nature to make it the ultimate eco-friendly play dough activity. It feels great to ditch environmentally hazardous glitter and plastic confetti for this beautiful alternative! Are you ready to make some natural play dough?
Here’s what you’ll need..
Supplies:
- Flowers- It’s currently winter, so we used bouquet flowers. YES, YOU CAN MAKE THIS ANY TIME OF YEAR!
- Play dough ingredients: 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, juice from half a lemon, water, olive oil (directions below)
- Scissors/Paper punch
- Play dough tools
- Play dough stamps– We used regular ink stamps.
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RELATED: Check out this Icy Flower Sensory Play– The sphere ice molds are so cool!
Here’s How We Made Natural Play Dough:
Step 1:
First, mix 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of salt together.
Step 2:
Next, boil 1.5-2 cups water. Once boiling, take the pot off the burner, and add the juice of half a lemon and 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the water.
Step 3:
Then, mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Slowly pour the water, oil, and lemon juice into the dry ingredients. Once the mixture has cooled off a bit, test it out and add more flour if it’s too sticky. I usually end up adding about 1/4 cup more flour after it’s cooled down. Now you natural play dough is all set!
You can also add drops of your favorite essential oil! I love adding about 5 drops of calming lavender oil to this recipe.
You can store the play dough in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.
We used cookie cutters to make star play dough pieces!
Next, my boys helped me make flower confetti. We used a paper punch and scissors to make the confetti. The paper punch can be difficult to use with fresh flowers. The petals still have water in them, so the confetti pieces tend to get stuck in the paper punch. I suggest using dried flowers if you want to use this method.
If you only have fresh flowers to work with, then you can tear the petals with your fingers or cut them with scissors.
Now it’s time to play!
I introduced the play dough tools and stampers at this point. My boys loved the texture of the play dough! They picked up the stars and squished them in their hands.
They also loved rolling the flower confetti into the play dough! My boys had a goal of getting all of the pieces rolled into the play dough.
Those little pieces of flower confetti look so pretty in the play dough!
We also used letter stampers in our natural play dough! This is such a fun way to work on literacy skills. Since New Year’s Eve is only a couple of days away, we decided to stamp “happy new year!”
The great thing about play dough is you can switch up the tools and materials to match the interests of your children or theme you are working on!
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I hope you give this natural play dough activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.
∼Tara
