This month I’m joining in with the Sensory Bin Challenge at Little Bins for Little Hands and we have been exploring flour & oil. Normally flour and oil would make moon dough or cloud dough but by playing around with the quantities and adding a bit more liquid to colour the dough, we made ours into more of a playdough consistency. This is a really easy no cook playdough recipe which only took a few minutes to prepare.
You will only need two ingredients. Adding colour is optional (but does make the dough more fun!)
- Flour
- Baby oil
Any oil would work, but baby oil smells nice adding an extra sensory element to the play, and it gives a nice soft playdough. If your child tends to eat the playdough, you will be better off with any edible oil. The baby oil I used is a spray oil, so to mix the dough I just unscrewed the top to pour it in more easily! It worked fine.
To add colour we used water colour paint from a tube mixed with water, to make a diluted paste. This is the brand of paint we used. (affiliate)
How to make the easy no cook play dough with flour & oil
We started off with quantity of 8:1 flour:oil as you would do for moon dough, then gradually added more baby oil until it became more of a dough like consistency. Just knead and mix with your hands until the dough starts to form.
From this, to this at the half way stage..
Adding the paint liquid to colour the dough also helped to bind it together into a firmer playdough
While colouring the dough and mixing this into the dough mixture, you will get some coloration onto your hands. By the time the dough is ready and the children are playing, the colour will be set into the dough and no longer colours hands when playing.
We just made one batch of yellow dough, but you could easily split it and make a few different colours to add variety or to let the kids practise colour mixing with the doughs.
Once the dough comes together into one soft round ball, then you are ready to play! Mr R had lots of fun with this and soon Mr T and Mr Z came to join in too!
I added lots of accessories to the table along with the dough and let Mr R lead the play however he liked.
This dough will last well in an air tight container for at least a week – maybe longer, we will have to see!
Anna Marikar, mum of four and seasoned blogger, has spent over a decade sharing her parenting journey and passion for kid-friendly crafts and free printables.
Her easy-to-follow craft ideas and practical parenting advice have transformed In The Playroom into a cherished resource for parents.
Thanks for the recipe! This looks great 🙂 The last few times we’ve tried to make play dough it has turned into a huge mess lol, but I think that may have been because of the extremely high humidity right now. We’ll be giving this one a try though!
I’ve never got round to making playdough – I really should!!
I keep thinking I must make some play-dough for my LO but never quite get around to this. Like the simplicity of this recipe so you’ve inspired me to give it a go!
When I ran a nursery, the recipe we used included a lot of salt to preserve it for longer, Do you still need that with your recipe!
This sounds really easy and great fun! We made cloud dough with baby oil and flour but will have to give ‘proper Play doh’ a try!
Thanks for the recipe I had forgotten it 🙂
This looks cool – lots of fun.
Thanks for joining in with this week’s Parenting Pin It Party xx
This sounds like fun, I love that it is no cook !
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