Play
Dough popped up in an ad the other day, and I wondered how old Silas should be
before I send some to him. Ironically, the next morning Hallie messaged that
they were making play dough. Then the memories of mixing homemade play dough
for my children came flooding back.
I reached for my recipe box and found my recipes for kids’ activities right where I left them 35 years ago – on yellow 3x5 cards in the right front side of the box. Of course, these days a mother would just look online, but back in the ‘80s, we got these recipes by networking with other mothers.
I have two recipes for play dough. The basic mixture is flour, water, oil, and salt. One recipe calls for a little cream of tartar and the other, alum. Of course, food coloring is added. My mother provided another recipe which was one cup of cornstarch and two cups of baking soda heated with 1 ¼ cups water. This batch was meant to be shaped, dried, and decorated for homemade Christmas ornaments.
I never tried Mother’s recipe, but I did make the recipe with alum. I remember that once I tried to make half the recipe, but apparently I forgot what I was doing and used the full amount of water or twice too much flour or something. At any rate, it was a mess! I felt guilty for the waste of flour, and I don’t think that I ever tried to make play dough again.
I don’t have a recipe for “peanut butter play dough,” but I note that it can be found online. I never made it. “Non-toxic” is important, but outright enticing the kids to eat the dough after messing in it with their grubby hands just seems gross. Shouldn’t they learn not to eat some things?
We had an extended family reunion in 1998 when our eldest grandchildren were two or three years old. (That’s right! – The elder of the two just turned 28. Time flies!) One daughter-in-law asked if she could go through my recipes and was delighted to find the kid activities. She was busy copying them down, but I don’t know if she ever tried them.
As for Hallie’s play dough experiment, she discovered that Silas is a little young to grasp the concept. Better to wait until he’s two, she says. No matter. It won’t be long, and she will be ready. KW
You never know--we might not have to wait so long. It's funny how seemingly out of the blue he can say or do new things. For instance, this week we added "bean" to his list of words. It didn't seem like "bean" was a word of focus, but he confidently pointed out to me that there was a bean in his soup.
ReplyDeleteWe have played with the play dough twice. The second time, I rolled them into smaller balls and he had a good time placing them in and out of their storage container.
I'm sure those little ones take in more than they initially communicate. Do you actually keep a list of words?
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear that Silas is having more experience with the play dough -- and that he enjoyed it.
I DO keep a list of words. Otherwise, if you asked us how many words he has (this is something a doctor might ask), we'd say, "Oh, probably six words", but it's actually about 30 now. It's also amusing to see the general order that he's learned words.
ReplyDeleteLight, more, garage door, cake (for Primo's sqeaky toy that's shaped like a cake), wheel, uh-oh, bye, door, teeth, sock, knife, heat, bread, walk, star, bump, nose, boar, shoes, coat, bark, ear, cart, hook, ball, down, up, logo (from the label on the can of pumpkin puree), bean
It's getting harder to keep track because he is trying out new sounds and I don't always know what he's talking about and also, he will repeat words and I might not know if he actually knows the word. He must demonstrate that he really knows the word in order for it to go on the list.
It will get even harder to keep track. Soon he will begin to string words together into sentences, and then I predict that you won't be able to keep up. I wonder when that will be.
ReplyDeleteOne recent day, I was at JoAnn's when I heard a little voice on the other side of the store say, "Uh-oh!" and I thought of Silas.