Kid Craft: Edible Play dough

Sorry I missed posting today. Late night, long day, no naps. You get the picture. But I am offering up double posts to make up for it. So enjoy!

I have been struggling with activities that work for all 3 of my kids at the same time.

5 and half, 3 and a half, 1 and a half.

It's the little one that's the problem. She wants to do everything her big brothers do, but she can't really. Unless I give her quite a bit of help--which she wants nothing to do with. And so, there haven't been many 3 kids projects going on around here.

The boys have been asking for play dough. But Lilly eats it. So we only do it when she is asleep. However, like I said, I am trying for activities for all 3 together, so I thought I'd give play dough another chance.

Of course I came up with a brilliant plan: edible play dough.

It would solve all my problems. And there would be peace on earth.

Yeah. It didn't quite work out like that.

Here is the problem with edible play dough. It is crumbly. Really, really crumbly. And it gets every where.

And you make it with peanut butter. And honey.

And it gets every where.

And it's sticky.

And we have a SERIOUS ant problem.

I had to wash every floor in my house because Lilly tracked the sticky, edible play dough every where.

Thank goodness I don't have carpet or I probably would have laid down and had a temper tantrum.

I also had to wash all the play dough toys because they were sticky too.

Edible play dough turned out to be a lot of work.

And despite the lack of enthusiasm shown in the above pictures, the boys really enjoyed playing with the edible play dough. They played with it for an hour.

Lilly, the whole reason the edible play dough was created, played with it for 10 minutes.

Mostly she ate it for 10 minutes.

Oh brother.

So edible play dough is not going to be in the rotation of kid crafts again any time soon. If I did decide to do it, I might leave out the oatmeal the recipe called for and see if that makes it less crumbly. I do have a jar of cheap peanut butter and half a bag of powdered milk left, so I want to try it again.

But not till spring when we can do it outside. And the ants can have a blast with all the crumbs.

Here's the recipe if you want it. It might work out better for you than it did for me.

Edible Play dough:

2 cups smooth peanut butter

2 cups rolled oats

2 cups dried milk

2/3 cup of honey

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until thoroughly combined. Store in an airtight container.

A couple of weeks later, we were stuck in the house during a week of rain. The boys wanted play dough again. Before I told them to go jump in the creek that was running down our street, I decided to make our regular old salt play dough.

We just didn't give Lilly any food coloring in hers.

But the boys made their dough very bright.

And true to form, Lilly ate her dough--1 cup of salt and all.

I love this play dough. It is fun to make. It is fun to add color to. It is fun to play with. It lasts a really long time.

It is way better than store bought play dough.

Here's the recipe:

Combine 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup salt, 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar in a heavy pan over medium heat.

Stir as the mixture thickens.

When it comes together as a dough, remove from heat.

When dough is cool enough to handle, add food coloring to dough and knead in.

Store in an airtight container.

Make some with your kids--I suggest the salt kind--but that's just the slightly neurotic house cleaner in me!

Have fun.