Christmas Playdough – Holiday Reading Activities

Yesterday I talked about Christmas cooking and reading. Cooking with children is really such a great way to encourage reading, and develop mathematical skills at the same time. It’s also a great way to make a huge mess and ensure you’ll end up frazzled…but enough of that.

Today we’re making scented Christmas playdough. PudStar loved making gingerbread and decorating it, her favourite part being choosing and using the cookie cutters. So a playdough version to be used over and over seemed a grand plan.

I’d seen scented playdough ideas at NutureStore before, and had always wanted to try some. I suppose I already make it a bit scented as I always add a drop of clove oil to stop it growing mould! I figured if I added cinnamon and sparkles we’d have a gingerbread smelling playdough…and indeed we did.

My playdough recipe is from MY kindy cookbook from 1980. I treasure this book,  which I stole from my mother. I love that the recipes have the family name next to them – I am still very close friends with one of the girls I went to Yeronga Kindy with, and love seeing the ‘Anderson’ name pop up in this book. My most favourite recipe is my mum’s carrot cake with cream cheese icing…I love that cake.

You can find many playdough recipes online, but below is an image from my Kindy cookbook with the recipe my mum made for me, and I now make for my girls.

To this recipe PudStar added a big spoonful of cinnamon, a bit of nutmeg, some ‘browning’ to turn it a gingerbread colour, and our normal clove oil. I also found bronze glitter in the glitter drawer…who but me would have glitter in every available colour?

PudStar pulled out her playdough ‘kit’, and ta da…Christmas dough!

PudStar: “I think daddy is going to be SO excited about the glitter!”

Me: “He just LOVES glitter doesn’t he? Lets make sure that lots of it gets stuck in his eyebrows. He loves going to work with glitter on his face”