"Snow" Playdough

Today we made some homemade playdough inspired by this post over on The Artful Parent. The end result is supposed to look like this:

{Photos copied from The Artful Parent}

I knew that C doesn't really know what candy canes are and would probably mush the two colors together to make it pink anyway (all the better in her mind!) so we decided not to bother with making separate batches or even separate colors. Thus I dubbed ours "snow" playdough (yes, that's white with sparkles. I'm an amazing mom, I know). It was super quick and easy to make and C even got to help me! She thought it was fantastic, which was my only goal anyway.

Here's the recipe: (copied straight from The Artful Parent post linked above)

Ingredients:

• 5 cups of flour
• 5 cups of water
• 2 1/2 cups of salt
• 3 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• 10 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• food coloring

{Side note: We halved this recipe and still had a full mixing bowl of dough. I think they were making a large quantity to give as gifts, so if you're just making some to have at home for a few children to enjoy you can easily halve the recipe and end up with plenty.}

Instructions:
Mix water, salt, cream of tartar and food coloring. Cook on medium-low, stirring regularly until mixture is hot. Add oil. Stir in flour a cup at a time, stirring in between each addition. Mix until playdough pulls away from pan and is no longer sticky (pinch between your fingers to test). Dump dough onto counter, let cool a bit, and knead.

And here we are having fun in the kitchen!

While our dough was cooling she got to work on a little side project in her own kitchen. I mean, if you're already wearing your apron...

Time to add the glitter!

Playing with the final product!

It was very difficult to capture the sparkle effect of the glitter in the photos since we used clear/irridescent glitter vs. a silver or multi-colored glitter, but it is definitely sparkly and shimmery! Since the color of the dough isn't a true white, I thought maybe adding a drop or two of blue food coloring might make it look a little more snowy. It looks equally as snowy, just a little blue. It would be a matter of personal preference is all. Older kids would probably enjoy doing the actual candy-cane version which does make it a little more interesting. But I have to say, at 2-1/2, C found the "snow" playdough absolutely fascinating. Over all I give this craft an "A" for toddler-friendly fun!

Just like our other advent activities we had a lot of fun with this one, tried something new, and did it together. "Snow" playdough isn't necessarily a Christ-centered activity, but doing fun things as a family to celebrate the season definitely is ;]