My Favorite Play Dough Recipe

Pumpkin spice black pepper orange play dough - lots of fun!

By Angie Quantrell @AngieQuantrell

Play dough is one of the absolute best toy/manipulative/sensory activities available to kid-dom!

I kid you not. Snicker, snicker. And not the snicker of the famed chocolate and peanut variety.

This is the best and most versatile recipe I've found. I have used it for over 20 years and have only rarely uncelebrated failure.

Tools make all the difference. Cutting, chopping, manipulating, and making prints are great activities for little hands.

Best Ever Play Dough Recipe

3 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 T. oil (vegetable or baby oil)
1 T. alum
3 cups boiling water
Paste food coloring (add to boiling water to melt and mix it)

1. Put dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Stir well.

2. Drizzle oil over dry mix.

3. Stir food coloring into boiling water. Pour over ingredients.

4. Stir well with a wooden spoon and spatula.

5. Turn out onto a counter. It will be hot, but you have to knead the dough while it is hot to activate the ingredients. Knead the dough and scrape off sticky bits with a spatula. Don't worry, it will get less sticky as it cools. If it is horribly sticky, add tiny bits of flour as needed.

6. After the mixture is well mixed, cool completely and store in a lidded plastic container.

7. Enjoy!

This is the basic recipe. I often add spices or textures like pumpkin spice, cornmeal, or cocoa. Play with the recipe. It's worth the mess.


Today Donavyn and I made play dough. He wanted orange, so we made orange. I wanted a scent, so I added pumpkin spice. He also wanted to dump pepper, so we added pepper!

Old tires make great tracks.

Together with play dough, tools and toys add to the experience. Be creative and grab things that make patterns, cut, chop, shape, and can be used to interact with the play dough. Avoid using anything you truly love. The salt and necessity of a good wash can potentially destroy special items. Stick to the eventually-disposable toys and you can dump your worries in the trash.

Even the sides of tires are interesting.


Even this 53 years-young kid loves to play with play dough.

What's your favorite sensory toy?



Staying Cool Fun at Nana's

Staying cool at Nana's incorporates several strategies. These are especially important since Nana is most of the time overheated anyway, regardless of record shattering temps.

Play and rock inside the cool living room. Ceiling fan on, AC on, shades at half mast to keep out the morning sun. Check.

Play and help your younger cousin go for a ride on the tricycle. Outside time in the morning, lots of shade under the patio for the driving loop, plenty of liquid to drink. Check.

Play in the patio shade with waterproof toy foods and dishes. Water the plants, splash the water, make up some tasty foods, put up tent for more shade. Check.

Play and have fun. Driving, cooking, splashing, swinging, pushing . . .

Always revert to water table to get wet. Check.

Easter Eggs April Fool's Day

As suggested by someone who shall remain unnamed, but he knows who he is, "Wouldn't it be fun to take the kids to the park on April 1st and tell the kids to go find all the Easter eggs?"

Sounds good, right? Except he was talking about not really hiding any eggs.

Poor kids. Out there all on their own, hunting in vain for non-existent eggs!

April Fools!

Have you been pranked today? I have to admit that I have read a few things that I was really impressed with, only to realize that the posts were, indeed, April Fools' Day gags. One in particular, a newsletter I follow written by a lady in France, had me so believing her misfortune and subsequent community service in Paris of cleaning the skulls (she was very detailed, down to using her toothbrush and olive oil) in the Catacombs that I couldn't wait for her next newsletter that would surely let us know how it went! (You can find her blog at www.french-word-a-day.typepad.com).

Smacked right into that one!

What has been the best prank I ever pulled?

I'm so glad you asked. There is one for which I am quite proud, and I will never be able to reproduce it again. (Pun intended, which you will get after you read on.)

Years ago, almost 27 in fact, I was pregnant with our first child. Baby Quantrell (that was back before parents-to-be regularly found out what sex the babies were before birth) was due to make an appearance on June 22, our anniversary. But he arrived nearly 3 weeks early on May 31.

This was fine for me, not so great for him, and quite a surprise for some.

At the same time, my college friends (aka, Jello Molders, so named for our April Fools' Day pranks of some notoriety) were traveling to my home to throw me a baby shower.

(Haha, rubs her hands with newborn-baby-sleep-deprivation glee.)

Baby Taylor, a boy, was sleeping peacefully in his crib. I, however, had a special plan in mind.

This mama stuffed a big pillow under her shirt and went to greet the first guest to the party, Angela.

"Hey, how are you?" she said, as we hugged hello.

"Pretty good," I replied, leading her around for a tour.

I also led her to the bedroom, where, voila, there was a baby sleeping.

"Oh, are you babysitting?" she asked.

To which I whipped out the pillow and said, "No, this is baby Taylor!"

Baby Taylor the day of the shower, 5 days old.

Ta-da!

I do confess that she was totally lost and confused for a moment. Once she understood my purposeful misleading, all was great. And funny.

When the rest of the crew arrived, Angela was in on the gag. I re-stuffed my shirt and went through the same scenario. Much to my delight and their amazement.

Wow. Wish I had a video camera back then. That was so much fun. One of my favorite stories. And I will never be able to reproduce it again. (Get it now? No more reproducing of that sort for this Nana.)

Ahhh. Those were the days.

Gotcha girls!

How about you? What was your best April Fools' Day gag or stunt?

Ice is a Great Way to Cool Off in Summer Heat

This is a fine way to entertain and cool off during summer heat - a great 2-fer-1 deal!

Ingredients: plastic tub, water, food coloring, freezer

Fill a plastic tub at least 2/3 full with water. Add swirls of food coloring. Freeze. Ours froze with weird lines, but I found out the lines corresponded with the rungs on the freezer shelves.

First we played with the ice in the tub.

Then we dumped out the ice and played.

Next we added water to the ice to see what happened (different color for a different day).

Finally we smashed the ice to smithereens.

Can't beat this cheap activity!

PS There was minimal staining on hands from food coloring. It didn't even last the entire activity.