Get Crafty – Make Playdough!

Last week when my son was sick, I have to admit I was pretty desperate about what to do with him all week.  He was sick and grumpy and although letting him sit all day on the couch and watch BabyTV was a possibility my inner mom wouldn’t let me do that.

Instead, I tried to get crafty.

A friend on Facebook posted a link to the blog post on 20 Ways to Keep Toddlers Busy.  I wrote down a big list of craft supplies and Bastien and I headed off to Target.

We tried:

• Pipe cleaners and colander (playtime 10 seconds) – basically you just get a colander and stick pipe cleaners randomly in it.  Very easy.
• Contact paper (the best out of them all – playtime about 5 minutes overall) – I just taped down a square of contact paper with painters tape on our coffee table and cut out a bunch of random felt shapes.  Bastien could stick them on wherever he liked.
• Paint in bags – OK you are supposed to stick paint in freezer bags and put it up on a window for them to smoosh around but the thought of that paint exploding everywhere kept me from actually doing this one.
• Pipe cleaners in a tube (play time around 1 minute until he ripped the tube off the wall) – You just tape a paper tube on the wall and let them drop junk down it into a bowl.  Interestingly Bastien tried to drop stuff ‘up’ it.

Other crafts attempted not on the ’20 Toddler Activities’ blog post:

• Colour chalk – We have a huge chalkboard painted in our kitchen and we’ve always just had white chalk.  Turns out red chalk kind of gets everywhere and this one was a bit short lived once he started drawing all over the walls.
• Colouring – Pretty short lived.  I think he likes the taste of wax better than colouring Mr. Potato Head.

So overall, not a lot of success.

I didn’t hold my hopes very high but thought what the hell let’s make some play dough.  It turned out to be one of the few successful things, and was super easy to make.  Does it matter that he only rips bits up and throws them around, or stabs the ball of play dough with pipe cleaners?  Nope.  You go and do whatever you want kid.

This recipe makes a lot.  So much that I gave half to my neighbour (sharing is caring!)

But it’s easy – so go for it.  It’s literally about 5 minutes.  Perfect in my books.

And sorry about the lack of photos – let’s just say between earaches and tonsillitis there hasn’t been a lot of free time around the household this week!  I got my recipe here, but a quick search on the web turns up 239,000 results….

ps sorry no post this week on another fave British dish/saucy details on my sister… hopefully to return next week. It’s just been a bit of a rough one….!