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?



Imagination & G-Paws Big, Big Door

by Angie Quantrell @AngieQuantrell

Donavyn playing with poker chips and making G-Paws big door.

"G-Paw has big, big doors." Said the boy who loves doors of all sorts.

Besides frequent discussions about doors, daily practice in opening and closing doors, making up silly songs about things that open, and drawing doors using various art materials, we have now added building doors with interesting manipulatives.

(For those who don't know about manipulatives, they are collections of junk or toys that can be used in play or learning - blocks, empty thread spools, lids, and so on.)

Donavyn pushing the button to open the garage door.

Mr. D recently had a day where he was quite creative about making G-Paws big, big door (garage door).

First, he wanted to make the door from plastic card chips (great manipulatives - they used to be tires during our play sessions - see how they transform?).

Do notice the white chips. They are the garage door opener switch. If you push those buttons, you have to make "Ehrrrrrrrrrrr" sounds as the door rolls up.

Next, Mr. D wanted to use magnetic letters on the refrigerator to make, yes, you guessed it, G-Paws big, big door.

Donavyn pushing the tiny switch button on the letters to open the garage door.

Again, buttons for controlling the opening and closing of the door were included. As an extra special treat, some of the letters had tiny little light switch looking shapes on them - perfect for button controls! Don't forget to say "Ehrrrrrrrrr" as the door opens.

We eventually moved on to using paint daubers (also known as Bingo daubers) to make doors and people. As long as doors and doorknobs were included, we were happy campers.

Isn't imagination a wonderful thing?


What creative ways have you seen children using their imagination? You might just have the next idea I need!

Cats and Their Toys

Her Highness, Mabel, too hot and exhausted to stand at the water bowl. Serve me please?

It's been a weekend of cat yack. Hoping that joy is complete after several doses of furball meds to both cats. Still not sure who the guilty one is. I think we have the quietest yackers ever.

But let's talk cats for a moment. It's been hot. Over 100 hot. The kitties in their shedding but still thick fur coats are feeling it.

Speaking of, will the guilty one who lost this tail clump please step forward? And do tell how it happened.

The joys of two cats that could be twins mean one never knows exactly who did, lost, ate, yacked, or chewed up what.

This perfect gem of a cat rule was in the Monday morning funnies. Totally true.

For example, all of those papers-in-process-of-becoming-masterpiece . . . TOYS. Thank you, Monet, for rearranging. Oh so much nicer.

These TOYS slide and skitter off the desk, table, and floor with such fascinating ease. Never do papers stay on the desk. Or bulletin board.

The cat puzzle transformed into a cat puzzle toy. Which one to flick off first? Where should I sit? Can I roll and then ease entire sections off the edge? Can mom work the puzzle with my help? Should I eat this one or that one?

The answer to all of the above is mostly yes. This one, sit here, yes they roll off, no mom can't do it with my assistance, and no, maybe I shouldn't eat that piece.

The puzzle is now put away for the lifetime of the two cats.

Happy Monday, cat owners. You know that of which I speak.


PS What is your cats' favorite toy?

Christmas Past - Taylor's Miniature Shop

Back in the day, when my babies were in grade school, before I was in grade school (as a teacher) I had hobbies. I know. Hard to believe.

But I had actual hobbies. One hobby that challenged me and gave great pleasure was doing miniatures. Making tiny worlds (hmmm, that is a form of play for children - making small worlds - and a type of writing for fantasy and science fiction - world building; may be on to something here) is fascinating. Trying to make toys and little bits of this and that look like real life dwellings and places is a wonderful pastime. All to scale of course. I was even in a miniature club. We met each month, made miniature items, and had fun networking as we shared ideas and resources.

Welcome to Taylor's shop. (I need to make it perfectly clear that Taylor would NEVER allow his tools to lay all over the floor and look this disorganized. But in the miniature world, how will you know there are cool tools and stuff if they are not out on display? We do what we have to do in our playtime.) I worked on this shop the same way I worked on a dollhouse for his sister. With much diligence and attention to detail. No doll stuff here though. No siree Bob.

Lots of fun features adorn Taylor's shop. Take the back wallpaper. Over time, the quality has faded. But it was originally a newspaper article that featured his kindergarten teacher and her treks across Manastash Ridge. I shrank it on a copy machine and glued it to the wall. The wood side walls are tiny stained coffee stir sticks. Or look at the collie. We had Jessie Collie Quantrell, a collie dog, when our children were growing up. Taylor's coffee mug has his name. A lawn mower sits in the attic (he was very attached to lawn mowers when he was growing up. He still lives and breathes engines. Just semi truck engines.) Some things are just for fun, but some are just for my boy.

Here we have been storing the shop for years. Now our grown-up boy can take it home. To his own shop.

Note: I do have actual hobbies now, just not so much in the miniature world. I dabble on occasion to create a seasonal themed display or some tiny gift. I even have a miniature house waiting for me, still sealed in the box. Hayden is dying to help me put it together. So when he is older, and maybe Khloe and Donavyn, too, they can help Nana play with miniatures.

The eyes have a harder time seeing minute items, but the spirit is willing. Let's play!