Homemade playdough is always so much better than store bought. Over the years, we have come up with some go-to playdough recipes that are sure to work. While there is nothing wrong with a guaranteed recipe, I wanted to try something different. This playdough made with hair gel certainly fits that description!
One of the nicest things about this recipe is that it doesn’t need cream of tartar. I don’t always have cream of tartar in the house, so it’s nice to be able to make playdough without it.
Playdough Made with Hair Gel:
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup of clear hair gel*
- 1/4 cup of water
- neon food colouring
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups of flour
*Note: This doesn’t need to be good quality hair gel. The containers from the Dollar Store work just as well as the expensive kind.
Directions:
- Place 1/4 cup of water and 1/2 cup of the clear hair gel in a medium sized bowl.
- Add 5 drops of neon food colouring to the liquid mixture.
- Stir until this is well combined.
- Add 1 cup of flour to the liquid.
- Begin stirring until the contents begin to clump.
- At this point, you can decide if you need to add additional flour. If the mixture feels sticky, add an additional 1/4 cup of flour, and continue to stir.
- When the flour has been incorporated, test it for stickiness.
- Add additional flour if needed.
- When the playdough is no longer sticky, it is ready to play with!
- Store in an airtight container when not in use.
Sensory play ideas with playdough:
- Shape it onto a playdough mat.
- Play Stuck in the Mud with toy cars.
- Roll it, squish it, press it, shape it.
- Use stamps or cookie cutters with the playdough.
- Put out a variety of small objects like beads, sequins, and buttons for kids to press into the play dough. This is a great way to work on fine motor skills.
- Another good fine motor activity is to cut rolls of playdough with scissors.
- Make pretend food.
Some of our other homemade playdough recipes:
Calming Lavender Scented Playdough 
Peppermint Essential Oil Playdough 
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(photos courtesy of Shelley of 
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