Garden Playdough
try this simple invitation to play over the weekend
The weekend is here, and since the weather is glorious, that brings with it plenty of opportunities to play outdoors.
If you haven’t heard already, 30 Days of Outdoor Play is officially in full swing for the month of April. It’s not too late to get started. Just download your copy of the pdf below and join in with the adventures!
Our Spring outdoor play challenge, plus Thursday’s post about pre-writing activities, made me think of this OG This Playful Home playdough invitation.
Old adventures in a new place
At the end of 2024, I made the decision to rehome my blog on Substack. It’s turned out to be quite a labour intensive choice, as I’m now uploading old posts manually. Whilst some posts have made me internally cringe, they’ve also served as a lovely reminder of all of the activities the children did when they were small.
My children are now fully in the middle years of childhood. In fact, my youngest turns 7 very soon. But nevertheless, they still love to play.
In the Garden Playdough post below, I mention my daughter’s love for making play dough. She was 3 at the time and, fast-forward 6 years, she has turned into an avid baker.
I’d love to think that all of our playful adventures whilst she was younger helped to build her confidence to give cooking a go now.
I hope you’ll forgive me for not completely editing my original post to fit 2025. You can read about our invitation to make Garden Playdough below.
An Invitation to Make Garden Playdough
If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that my daughter and I have been making play dough together for a while now. Not only is it a great early introduction to cooking, but there’s heaps of learning benefits too. Our basic recipe pretty much always stays the same – no need to look at a recipe, but we’re forever adapting and changing ingredients.
Read on to find out about our latest play dough session.1
Garden Play dough from start to finish…
My daughter helped me with every element of the play dough making process, from picking the herbs in the garden, to mixing and stirring it all up.
Whilst playing with play dough has heaps of benefits in its own right, here’s why I always choose to do the whole thing with my three year old daughter:
One on one time: Z has two brothers (aged 10 and 1) and I try to carve out individual time for all of them. We like to create together and making play dough is one way we like to spend time together.
Early introduction to mathematical skills: pouring and measuring, counting cups and even basic division featured. When she is older, I’ll introduce her to the measuring scales too.2
Fine Motor skills: For this recipe, Z picked the herbs, used a spoon (and her hands) to mix, used a scissors to cut the herbs and finally, played with the dough!
Hand Strength: Squeezing the lemon juice into the bowl and mixing ingredients with her hands all helps Z to strengthen her hands.
It’s Fun! Put simply, this is a really fun activity for little ones. Mine love to get involved with practical activities with a purpose.
You will need:
2 cups of plain flour
1/2 cup salt
Lemon / lime
1 cup of boiling water (obviously don’t your littles do this part) that has been cooled.
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp of cream of tartar
Selection of herbs and flowers from the garden ( we used rosemary, rose petals, mint and sage)
Wooden spoon
Large bowl
Cup for measuring
Chopping board
Scissors
Method
Add the dry ingredients to the bowl and stir in well
Next squeeze in the lemon/ lime juice and the olive oil. The mixture should start to bind together
Gradually pour in the cooled boiled water. Then mix together – hands are best, but please check the temperature of the mix first before letting a little one do this!
Keep adding more water until you get the desired ‘play dough’ texture – it should be too crumbly or too sticky.
Add more water or more flour if needed.
Finally, chop the herbs with a scissors and roll into the dough
This post was originally published in 2019.
I can confirm, that we did introduce her to the digital scales for her bakes and she measures ingredients independently