I love incorporated new and different ingredients into our playdough recipes! Embracing variety provides an ever changing sensory experience for sensory seeking kiddos of all ages. You might be surprised to know that even teenagers will come to the table to play when the playdough smells this good. Get your whole family involved in the making and playing with this Chai Tea Playdough recipe.
The loose tea in the playdough adds texture and the aroma of the chai tea and spices smells amazing! Add cinnamon sticks and anise stars to your child’s play for a full sensory experience!
Chai Playdough Recipe
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup salt
- 1 Tablespoon cream of tartar
- 1/2 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 Tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 cup water
- 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
- 3-4 bags of chai tea
Step-By-Step Instructions
- Add the flour, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cream of tartar to a medium mixing bowl. Open 2 tea bags and sprinkle the contents into the flour mixture. Whisk to combine and set aside.
- Add the water to a medium saucepan and heat to boil. Remove from heat and add 1-2 tea bags and steep for 3-4 minutes.
- Add the vegetable oil to the hot tea mixture. Stir to mix.
- Gently pour the flour mixture into the saucepan and stir continuously until a large lump of dough forms.
- Allow the playdough to cool for 5 minutes before handling.
- Transfer the chai tea playdough to a flat working space and knead for 3-4 minutes or until soft and pliable.
- Store in an airtight container (or Ziploc bag) for up to 2 weeks.
Chai Tea Play Dough Invitation to Play
If you involved your children in the process of making the playdough (which I highly recommend) the invitation to play isn’t nearly as much about a verbal invitation as it is the provision of ingredients and supplies to encourage exploration and delight. Star anise and cinnamon sticks are the two items we already recommended having on hand. But it doesn’t have to stop there! A well-rounded collection of playdough tools and toys is an excellent investment. Since we have a pretty large collection of these tools I like to rotate the selection to keep playdough play fresh and new. Here are a few of our favorites:
In addition to store-bought and playdough specific tools you can also gather items you already have around the house for your children to use. Since this is taste-safe playdough, you can use standard kitchen items like rolling pins, cookie cutters or cookie stamps, and child-safe knives.
Other items from around the house can be great additions to your invitation to play! Think of things that can make impressions in the dough: varying sizes of bubble wrap, brushes, buttons, coins, straws, plastic silverware, plastic magnet letters, dice, etc.
Though not taste safe, found items in nature can also be fun! Pinecones, rocks, sticks, holly leaves, acorns, walnuts, shells, and fossils are all great examples of things you can bring inside for playdough play. Ask your kids what else they can find to use in the playdough. They always have the best ideas!
Chai Tea Playdough Extension Activities
If the pure sensory experience a a delicious smelling dough with a funky texture isn’t enough for your kiddo, you can always add extra activities to tie the play dough play into other subject areas. From tie ins with great literature to reinforcing math concepts, play dough is a great learning aid. Here are a couple of examples.
Demonstrate simple math concepts using LEGO® impressions in the playdough. Practice addition (adding or counting the dots), subtraction (smoothing out the dots to subtract them), or multiplication (lining up the rows of impressions and counting. the outside two rows to multiply, then physically counting the full total to show how that worked.)
Read books such as Have You Seen My Acorn. Make impressions in the playdough with an acorn to mark the squirrels progress as he quizzes all the animals and chases down clues. Provide your child with a bag of Chai Tea Plaudough with an acorn hidden inside as you finish reading the book and provide an invitation to play, talking about the book as you play together.
Why Play with Play Dough?
The sensory benefits alone make the mess of making and playing with play dough a worthwhile experience for children. The smells, the textures, and the proprioceptive feedback provided during playdough play will help a child feel more grounded and secure. As if the sensory benefits are not enough, your child will also be improving fine motor skills, developing cricital thinking skills (What will happen if I do it this way?) and practicing verbal skills (“Mommy, look at the cake I just made!”). If encouraged, playdough play can also lend itself toward pretend play, storytelling and more! Giving your child rich and enticing free play opportunities can only help in so many ways.
Kids can mould and shape to their heart’s content. It’s such a fun activity.
The ingredients are ones that you may already have in your pantry which is another benefit to choosing to make this edible pudding play dough.
This easy activity is suitable for preschoolers who are just learning these concepts or even for children in Kindergarten or early elementary to help reenforce colour and counting concepts.
Directions:
This sensory play activity is engaging and a wonderful learning opportunity. If your child has seen the movies or read the books, they can recreate scenes or they can just use their imaginations to build their own Peter Rabbit world. They can then act out scenarios with the characters.
KitchenAid Directions:
This activity is so sensory rich. Kids engage their visual, tactile, and proprioceptive sensory systems when they are squishing, moulding, sculpting, shaping, rolling, and pressing the dough and the other items in the invitation to play. If scented playdough is used, then they are also engaging their olfactory sensory system.
This simple activity which also gives fine motor skill practise is great for preschools or home. For older kids, it can be a good way to involve sensory into a unit study.
Directions:
When we first brought home two of our kids from Ethiopia, not only were they trying to learn a new language, they were trying to learn a new alphabet. I tried all of the usual methods to no avail. My kids weren’t making any progress.
