homemade peppermint play dough

The kids and I made this fun homemade peppermint play dough last week.  They LOVED it.  We made two batches.  One white and one red.  With plenty of glitter!  Then we packaged it up and gave it to their classmates at their Christmas parties.  It was a fun project and making candy cane play dough was on our December Advent bucket list!  Check.  :)  You should make some.  It was so easy and fun.  The kids have played with it for hours.  Now ours are all pink.  haha.

I saw the idea here on Pinterest.  (shocker, I know!) (Come on over and follow me, if you’d like.)   The pin leads you here to the recipe and idea at The Artful Parent.  Great blog.

What you need:

• 5 cups of water
• 5 cups of flour
• 2 1/2 cups of salt
• 3 TBS cream of tarter
• 10 TBS vegetable oil
• food coloring
• glitter
• peppermint extract or essential oil 
  

What you do:

Mix water, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring regularly until mixture is hot. Add the oil. Stir in the flour a cup at a time, stirring in between each addition. Mix until playdough pulls away from pan and is no longer sticky (touch it and pinch it to test). Dump dough on counter, let cool, then knead.  While you are kneading, knead in the glitter and about 10 drops of peppermint oil.

Then we portioned ours out, made snakes and twisted the two colors together.  I made a little tag in Word and included the recipe, just in case!  :)  Great project.  The kids loved it.   40 bags was possibly a little ambitious….but we got it done and it was fun!