RECIPES

PLAY DOUGH
Ingredients:
  • 1 cup of plain white flour
  • 1/2 cup of salt
  • 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar (found in the spice aisle at your grocery store)
  • 1 cup of water
  • 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil
  • Food coloring
Mix all the ingredients together with a fork in a mixing bowl until the mixture is smooth and one solid color.  Pour the mixture into a pan and bring to a low boil over medium heat.  Stir until smooth and then until playdough bunches up to form a ball.  Take it out of the pan and allow the play dough to cool.  Knead for a few minutes and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  Add sparkles for extra fun!  

SILLY DOUGH
Silly dough is fun to bounce on the floor and can lift an image off of the newspaper comics like Silly Putty from the store! (I have found the Silly Dough does not keep forever and will eventually get too sticky to play with.)
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Ingredients:
  • 1/4 cup of liquid laundry starch
  • 1/2 cup of white school glue (Elmer's)
  • 1/4 teaspoon of food coloring 
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.  Let it sit for 5 minutes.  Knead the mixture by hand until the starch is completely absorbed and the color is even.  The mixture will start stringy and clumpy, but will smooth out to a solid consistency with more kneading eventually.  Store in an airtight container.  If the dough dries out, dip it into warm water and knead again.  If the dough becomes sticky, add liquid laundry starch and knead again.  Continue to add starch followed by kneading until the mixture sticks together and doesn't stick to your fingers.  

SIDEWALK PAINT
Ingredients:
  • 1/2 cup of cornstarch
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 10 drops of food coloring 
Put cornstarch in a small plastic bowl and gradually stir in the cold water.  Add your desired food coloring and stir.  If the paint still feels too dry, just add a little more water until you get the consistency you prefer.  Repeat the process to create different colors.  Paint on a dry sidewalk using a paintbrush.  The cornstarch and water will separate after it sits for awhile, but can be restored for more painting by stirring again.  This sidewalk paint washes off easily and will not harm plants.

RAINBOW CRAYONS
Materials Needed:
  • Old Crayons (Broken crayons work great!)
  •  Silicon Molds
  • Oven
  • Cookie Sheet

Peel the paper wrappers from each crayon.  If the paper is too hard to get off, you can soak them in a bowl of water for a few hours.  This will make the paper easier to peel off.  Break the crayons into pieces. Smaller bits will melt more quickly in the oven and will therefore have less time to run and bleed into neighboring colors.  Fill molds with crayon pieces.  Make sure to just SLIGHTLY overfill each mold, as the crayons will melt down and take up less space.  

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  Place the molds on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until the crayons are completely melted. Very carefully, so as to not spill any melted crayon, remove the cookie sheet from the oven. As the crayons cool, they will harden. To speed up the process, transfer the molds into the freezer after the crayons firm up. 

​After about 30 minutes, remove the molds from the freezer. If the bottoms of the mold are cool, you can release the crayons from the mold by first gently pulling and stretching the molds to loosen up the crayons and then pushing each crayon up and out from the bottom. If the molds are still warm to the touch, return them to the freezer and check again in 10 minutes.