sensory play

How to Colour Cloud Dough

Cloud dough (sometimes called Moon Dough) is great for sensory play. Follow these simple instructions for how to colour cloud dough. Being able to make it in a variety of colours enables you to make it for specific themes or holidays. I love the silky soft feel of cloud dough. The texture is hard to beat. It is messy sensory play at its best. It is easy to make. Cloud dough uses common ingredients that are already in most people’s kitchens.

Playing with cloud dough is fun for kids as they explore the feel of it. It is powdery, but it is also moldable. This creates endless possibilities for play. My favourite recipe is one that uses baby oil, but I wanted this recipe to be taste safe for it to be baby safe, so I have used an edible oil in this one instead.

How to Colour Cloud Dough:

2 cups flour
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tsp. candy colour*

* It is important that you use candy colour in this recipe and not food colouring. Food colouring won’t mix with the oil, but oil based candy colour will.

Pour the candy colour into the oil and stir well.
In a medium sized bowl, dump the 2 cups of flour.
Pour the coloured vegetable oil into the flour and stir.
Once it is well mixed, knead with your hands to continue to distribute the colour throughout the dough.

You can repeat the process as many times as you like to create different colours. This recipe is taste safe so it can be used with babies who have a tendency to put everything in their mouths as they explore the world around them. It won’t taste great, but it isn’t harmful.

As with all sensory play, adult supervision should be used at all times.
This recipe is included in our Sensory Play Recipes eBook. It includes more than 25 easy to make recipes for awesome sensory activity options. You can try a sample of five of the recipes just by putting your email below:

Another way to colour cloud dough:

2 cups of flour
sidewalk chalk
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Grate or pound a piece of sidewalk chalk into powder.
Mix the chalk powder into the flour in a medium bowl.
Pour in the vegetable oil and mix.
Knead by hand to further combine.

Repeat the process with other colours of chalk to create more colour options.

This recipe is obviously not taste safe because of the chalk in it. It is best to use the other recipe with babies and little ones who may try to put it in their mouths. This cloud dough recipe is a good one to use with older kids though.

What about the mess?

Coloured cloud dough is messy no matter which recipe you use. It’s best to keep it away from carpet or couches that may stain.

I know that messy sensory play is something that can make parents squirm, but there are ways to keep the mess somewhat contained and still give your kids all the benefits of sensory play.

Place the cloud dough in a bin and take it outside if possible. In the cold of winter, you can place the bin on an old sheet or buy a shower curtain from the dollar store to put it on.

When play time is over, gather up the corners of the sheet or shower curtain and take it outside. Give it a shake. Just like that, any of the dough not in the bin won’t be on your floor!

Check out some of our other sensory play recipes:

Rainbow Soap Foam Condensed Milk Paint

Glow in the Dark Slime with Glitter

By Sharla Kostelyk Leave a Comment

Glow in the dark slime is easier to make than you may think. This particular slime doesn’t even need a black light to glow. Adult supervision should always be used when making slime.

Glow in the Dark Slime Recipe:

6 oz. Elmer’s washable clear school glue
10 drops vetiver essential oil
1 Tbsp. baking soda
2 tsp. glow in the dark paint or gel
1 Tbsp. glow in the dark powder
1-3 Tbsp. contact solution (be sure that the contact solution you use includes both boric acid and sodium borate in the ingredient list or it won’t work)
2-3 Tbsp. of neon glitter Instructions:

Add the glue and essential oil to a small glass bowl and stir.
Add the glow in the dark paint or gel, the glow in the dark powder, and the baking soda.
Mix everything together.
Add 1 Tablespoon of contact solution to the bowl. Mix well.
You know that the slime mixture is ready to come out of the bowl when it pulls away from the edges of the bowl. You may need to add another Tablespoon or two to the mixture for it to come away completely.
Remove the slime from the bowl* and knead it on a flat surface until it’s nice and smooth.
Add the glitter and continue to knead until it is incorporated into the slime.

To make the slime glow, hold it under a light or take it into the sunlight for about 30 seconds. Then, bring it into a completely dark room and it will glow! Store the glow in the dark slime in an airtight container or plastic bag. If stored properly, this slime will keep for a long time.

*Pro slime making tip: Squeeze a drop of the saline solution onto your finger and rub gently onto both hands before handling the slime. This will prevent the slime from sticking to you.

This slime would be cool to make for Halloween or for a sleepover party. The kids could enjoy its glow after dark. If you want to give it out as party favours, you can use baby food jars as containers wrapped with purple ribbon around the top.

Check out some of our other awesome slime recipes:

Creepy Spider Web Slime

Peppermint Ribbon Scented Slime

Rainbow Confetti Party Slime

Easy Fall Sensory Bag

By Sharla Kostelyk Leave a Comment

I love the colours of autumn. I wanted to bring that into this activity. With just a few items, you can create a simple Fall sensory bag. This is great for a sensory station or easy busy bag.

Sensory bags engage the senses while containing the mess.

Of course, if you have little ones, you’ll want to seal the bag and make sure that they don’t put it in their mouths. To seal the bag, simple fold duct tape over all the edges. You can use duct tape in fall patterns or fun colours.

How to make a Fall Sensory Bag:

foam acorn shapes
confetti leaves
hand sanitizer
resealable plastic bag
glitter (optional)
duct tape (optional)

Place two or three of the foam shapes in a medium sized or sandwich sized resealable bag. Add in the confetti leaves. Squeeze some hand sanitizer into the bag and begin to seal. Remove as much excess air as you can and completely seal the bag. If you’re using the sensory bag with babies, toddlers, or preschoolers, I recommend sealing the bag with duct tape. Fold duct tape over all sides of the bag. You can find all kinds of fun coordinating prints and colours.

Some of the foam shapes we used had glitter on them, so I didn’t feel it necessary to add glitter to our sensory bag, but you could add in some glitter in gold or brown.

We also made a Fall Sensory Bottle and a Fall Sensory Bin to play with.

Check out some of our other sensory bags for kids:

Squishy Sky Sensory Bag

Christmas Sensory Bag

Peppermint Scented Slime Recipe

By Sharla Kostelyk 1 Comment

I’ve been wanting to try to make a scented slime for awhile now. This peppermint scented slime is just the kind I was hoping to make.

Slime is already such an intense sensory experience. It engages the visual, tactile and proprioception sensory systems. Adding scent to it engages the olfactory sense as well.

Be aware that peppermint is an alerting scent, so this is not a good pre-bedtime activity! Alerting scents can be extremely useful though.

If you find that your child is in a state of their “engine running low”, an alerting scent combined with the proprioceptive input of playing with slime can “wake” them up. This can help them maintain attention and be more engaged.

Peppermint Scented Slime:

16 oz. Elmer’s washable school glue
1 cup liquid starch
3-5 drops of peppermint essential oil
lime green acrylic paint
raspberry pink acrylic paint
light pink acrylic paint

Mix together the white glue and drops of peppermint essential oil in a large bowl. Add the liquid starch slowly, a bit at a time and stir as you add. When it starts to pull away from the sides, divide it in equal parts into three smaller bowls.

In one bowl, stir in a few squirts of the green paint. In another bowl, stir in a few quirts of the darker pink paint. In the last bowl, mix in the lighter pink paint. Knead each one separately until it becomes the consistency of slime.

The cool thing is that if you set the colours next to each other in thin strips, it looks like peppermint ribbon candy! Just a little note to add: once you start playing with all three colours together, they will eventually mix. The colours don’t stay magically separated!

When not in use, store the slime(s) in airtight containers or sealed bags at room temperature.

Check out these other scented sensory play activities:

Calming Lavender Scented Bubble Recipe

Peppermint Scented Christmas Playdough

Spider Slime Recipe: Just Like A Spider Web

By Sharla Kostelyk 1 Comment

This spider web slime is great for Hallowe’en parties. You can make a sensory play station and include this as an activity or use it as a party favour. This slime would also work well at a Spiderman birthday party. You know that spider web in a bag stuff that you can buy around Hallowe’en time? Well, I thought I could use that to make a really cool slime. I was very wrong! Do not make the same mistake I did and use the spider web stuff that comes in a bag to try to make a slime. It will be disastrous and messy.

I was able to discover that there is a way to make slime that has a spider web look to it and still work.

Spider Web Slime Recipe:

5 oz. bottle of Elmer’s washable white school glue
½ cup water
1 tsp. borax
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. + 1 tsp. Instant Snow
plastic spiders or black polymer clay to make your own

How to Make Spider Web Slime:

Pour 1/2 cup glue in a bowl.
Add in 1/2 cup of water and stir them together.
In a small bowl, combine 1 cup of water and 1 tsp. of borax.
Slowly pour the borax mixture into the glue mixture, stirring until it has reached slime consistently.
Knead the slime with your hands for a few minutes.
Add 1 Tbsp. Instant Snow to the slime.
Work the Instant Snow in by kneading until it is fully mixed into the slime.
Slowly add up to 1 tsp. more Instant Snow until you reach the texture and look you’re looking for. Continue to knead.
The slime will be stiff at first, but as you continue kneading, it will get better and better. It takes a bit for the Instant Snow to expand.
Add in a few plastic spiders or some polymer ones. (Directions for making your own spiders are below.)

Store the spider web slime in an airtight container.

Instant Snow Powder Plastic Spiders, 3 Sizes Elmer’s Liquid School Glue

For the spiders, only a small amount of polymer clay is needed. Roll 2 small balls of black polymer clay for the spider’s body. Then make a long snakelike piece and cut out the legs. Shape together. Bake on wax paper at 275° for a few minutes.

The polymer spiders will not stick very well, but they are great for imaginative play! They are fun for kids to make and they can use them for other Hallowe’en decorating or play as well.The little beads created with the Instant Snow make playing with this spider web slime a very tactile sensory experience.

Check out some of our other Hallowe’en slime experiences:

Easy Hallowe’en Slime Hallowe’en Sensory Slime Game

Colour Mixing Sensory Science

By Sharla Kostelyk 3 Comments

Learning about colours doesn’t have to be boring. Our colour mixing sensory science made for a very fun few days! We were inspired by our Rainbow theme last week and decided to extent our learning about colors into this week. There is a song that we sang (to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”):

“When you hug blue and yellow, it makes green; when you hug blue and yellow, it makes green; when you hug these two you’ll see a new color magically; when you hug blue and yellow, it makes green.”

Of course, for the next two versus, you make orange by “hugging” red and yellow and make purple by “hugging” red and blue.

We did a few easy color mixing experiments.

Colour Mixing Sensory Bags:

Supplies needed:

resealable plastic sandwich bags
red paint
blue paint
yellow paint

Instructions:

Squirt some blue paint and red paint into one bag, ensuring that the paints are on opposite sides of the bag. Do the same in other bags with blue paint and yellow paint in one and red paint and yellow paint in another.

Seal the bags, removing as much of the excess air as you can.

Discuss primary and secondary colors.

Have the child hypothesize what colours will be created when the paint is mixed.

Have the child mix the paints together with their fingers by moving the paint around through the bag. This is a great sensory activity too. The kids are able to create other colours by squishing the primary colours into each other.

You can hang the bags on the window using clear packing tape and have the child observe how the sun shining through affects the appearance of the colours.

This experiment is one of many included in the first volume of our Sensory Science Book. It is full of engaging hands-on learning designed to help kids retain what they learn because of using their senses in the process.

Colour Mixing Mini Volcanos:

Supplies needed:

baking soda
cake pan
vinegar
food colouring
droppers

Instructions:

Place a layer of baking soda in a cake pan. Fill three cups a third of the way with vinegar and add about five drops of food colouring to each cup.

Fill the droppers with the coloured vinegar and squeeze it out onto the baking soda. By adding another colour on top, you can create little volcanos of new colour in mixing them.

They loved this activity!The kids learned:

-that the best way to form a new colour was to have a person with one dropper of one colour and another person with another colour squeeze at the same time in the same area. Once left on the baking soda, the colours did not mix as easily.

-that mini volcanos are fun.

-that when you pour the three glasses of color into each other, you end up with almost black.

Mommy learned that when you do this activity, you should put newsprint down to protect your counters!!! (note that in the early picture, there was none underneath!)

The kids especially liked the look of the bottom of the cake plate after we were done and wished we could hang it like artwork. Unfortunately, a picture of it will have to do!

Some of the books that we read that were related to colour:

The kids also completed a great colour mixing worksheet (find it here) and had fun with some Mandala coloring pages that I printed for free from here.

They also had plenty of opportunity for hands-on learning on colour mixing with paint.

Check out these other great sensory science activities:

Jello Science Experiments

Sensory Smell Bottles