Afternoon Activity: No Cook, 2-Ingredient Play Dough

For today’s afternoon activity adventure, Rose and I made a 2-ingredient play dough recipe I found while searching Pinterest. The result was a super soft dough somewhere in the middle of the play dough to cloud dough spectrum. It was in no way, shape, or form as crumbly or powdery as the cloud dough and since it had no salt it wasn’t as tough or clean as play dough. I do highly suggest that you read the entire post (at least the conclusion part) before setting out to make this recipe. That way you know what you are in for. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ingredients:

1 part conditioner

2 parts corn starch

Activity:

Before jumping into everything, I poured the cornstarch into a shallow plastic dish and let Rose play with it by itself. Corn starch has a unique texture so go ahead and play with it yourself. Use this moment to talk with your child either prompting an older child to describe how it feels or by telling your younger child its color and texture. I hid small lids in the corn starch and Rose has a blast digging them out.

Alright, if you are ready to get on with the show. I put the cornstarch up on the counter for a while and brought down the conditioner in a separate bowl. I squeezed a couple drops of Sargent Art’s WaterColor Magic coloring to it (you can use food coloring) and let Rose mix it up.

Bring the cornstarch back down and slowly add the conditioner to it. This is where things get really messy. We tried mixing it with a spoon but it began clumping up really bad. So we went all in and got our hands in and squished it with our fingers. Hence why there are no pictures of it clumped up since my hands were all goopy. (I did remake a small batch afterward, see the small container above.) 

Continue adding more conditioner until you have a nice consistency. Remember, not all conditioners have the same consistency so the 1:2 ratio may need to be adjusted a bit. If you overdo it, just add a bit more cornstarch.

After a while you will be able to shape the goopy gunk into a smooth dough-like ball. Ta-da! You just made our amazing 2 ingredient, no cook, super soft play dough.

Conclusion:

Pros:

• 2 Ingredients
• No cooking required
• Soft texture which you can talk about with your child
• Smells great
• Leaves hands silky smooth

Cons:

• Creates ONE GIANT MESS! I spent more time cleaning up afterward then I spent on the activity itself.
• Play dough leaves a residue on the tabletop and hands.
• Crumbles when trying to form. (This may be fixed by using more conditioner. I don’t know. I did not try.)

What I would have done differently:

• I would have taken Rose’s clothes off at the beginning. The goopy glop got everywhere and I had to soak her clothes in the sink. I didn’t want to find out what cornstarch would do to my washing machine.
• I would have taken my ring off. Dried cornstarch goop is hard to get out of tiny cracks.
• I would have contained Rose to a high chair. She began walking around leaving (the cutest) little powder tracks across my kitchen floor.
• Finally, I would have made a smaller batch. A lot of cornstarch makes a lot of mess.

Overall Rating: 1 Star

With this activity, the pros did not outweigh the cons. I cannot stress this enough. I wish I could explain perfectly how big of a mess it was. It took me 30 minutes to clean. Which involved soaking Rose’s clothes, washing dishes, cleaning the tablecloth and the counters (wet cornstarch forms a heck of a film), and finally vacuuming and mopping the floors. The cornstarch goes everywhere. Perhaps I would add a couple of stars if we could do this activity outside, but it is winter so that’s out of the question right now.