By Kevin Williams
So, Gloria gave us a recipe a few weeks ago for homemade play-dough and she said it kept her kids busy for hours. That sounded like just what I needed to get some work done.  Both girls were eager to make homemade playdough. 5 ½-year-old Aster busied herself gathering ingredients as I read them off and Bea just wanted us to hurry up so she could start dumping stuff into the bowl.
Here's my takeaway from all this:
Making the playdough with the kids was the most fun part....I think they enjoyed making it more than playing with it. It also took us way too long, 45 minutes from start to finish, by the time we washed our hands, gathered ingredients, stirrred, heated, kneaded, added food coloring, cleaned up, etc. It took 45 minutes to make and then I was ready for the "pay-off", which would be busy kids for hours while I got some things done.  Aster and Bea loved playing with the playdough and I made sure they had all sorts of playdough molds and tools to use but after about 20 minutes they were done and on to the next thing. SIGH.
Verdict: this is a great activity to do with the kids, making the playdough, but each child is different, yours may be entertained for hours, but you might also only get 20 minutes out of it.  Want to make the playdough? this is Gloria's homemade recipe. Here are some photos:
This is Gloria's playdough, notice how evenly and prettily the food coloring is mixed in? Ours just didn't do that, perhaps I lost patience and didn't knead enough....
They had fun playing - for awhile....but our food coloring hued playdough didn't look as pretty as Gloria's....
The kids had fun measuring the stirring
Heat over medium and stir constantly, makes a very thick consistency.....
They had fun playing - for awhile....but our food coloring hued playdough didn't look as pretty as Gloria's....
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