Pretend play comes alive with this melting ice cream playdough. With a consistency in between oobleck and playdough, it really does mimic the look of melting ice cream. 
Kids can pretend that they are making ice cream or creating a play ice cream parlour. It’s fun to make this dough in several colours.
Melting Ice Cream Playdough:
Materials needed:
1/2 cup of cornstarch
1/4 cup of coffee creamer
a few drops of food colouring
Directions:
- Combine the coffee creamer and the cornstarch.
- Add a few drops of food colouring.
- Mix well.
- You will be able to form a ball with the dough, but it will ‘melt’.
- When not playing with it, store the ice cream playdough in a resealable freezer bag in the fridge.
- Allow it to sit out for a bit to get to room temperature before playing again.
The dough feels like a solid, but it behaves as if it is a liquid. The result is an interesting and engaging sensory play material!
Although this playdough recipe is technically taste-safe, it doesn’t taste good! So while kids may want to pretend to be assembling ice cream cones, they probably won’t want to pretend to eat them.
Sensory Play ideas:
Create a playdough station. Set out plastic ice cream cones, bowls, spoons, and an ice cream scoop. I’ve found some really cute ice cream bowls and spoons at the Dollar Store that would be perfect. If you want, you can also set out sprinkles. Kids can then make pretend ice cream cones.
While they play, kids can discuss the texture of the dough and what happens when they handle it. They can also talk about the look and smell of the dough. It may smell a bit like ice cream and they can try to guess why that might be based on the ingredients in it.
Check out some of our other playdough stations:
