How to Make Play Dough and Use it at Your Next Social Gathering

Added: 12/15/2005

Now that Strawberry Shortcake and Scooby Doo are back, it seems only appropriate that play dough would also make a comeback in our adult lives. Learn how to make play dough and how to modify some common games for play dough. By following a few simple trips and tricks, you could be reliving your childhood and adding some spark to your game night.

Play dough is a staple of any good childhood. As kids, we loved that stuff, squeezing it through our fingers, molding it into a myriad of different shapes, mixing the colors to create new ones, and, if you were lucky, pressing it through one of those gimoes that would change mold it into strings or some other shape. Play dough was a lot of fun when we were kids but it can be even more fun now that we are adults. Learn how to make play dough that can be used game after game, tips to keep your carpet and furniture safe while you are playing with the stuff, and how to modify games for play dough.

The first step is to make play dough. Of course you can buy it, but that is taking away half the fun. There are many recipes floating about the internet for play dough. One recipe calls for one cup of flour, one cup of warm water, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon of oil, ¼ cup of salt and food coloring. You are supposed to combine the ingredients, stirring over medium heat until smooth. You are then supposed to knead the dough until it is fully blended and put that into a plastic container. Another recipe is simply 2 cups of flour and one cup of water blended together until smooth. You can use flavor gelatin, food coloring, or even Kool-Aid to color your play dough.

Keep in mind when you make play dough and color it, you may potentially have to get it out of clothes and carpets. To help avoid a mess when every one leaves, consider holding the game in the kitchen or somewhere over tile or linoleum floors. If that is not possible, consider laying down newspaper, towels, or a table cloth or cheap rug you don't care about any more. When you make play dough, you also may want to consider dyeing it a color that won't show terribly on your carpet. For example, if you have white carpet, consider white or very light colored yellow, pink or blue for your coloring. If your carpet is darker, use darker shades. Say your carpet is dark brown, consider a dark purple, red, brown or orange for play dough coloring.

Not only can you make play dough, you can also use it in games. One of the more common uses for it is to use it instead of a pen and paper in Pictionary. Divide into teams as if you were playing Pictionary. The person who will be molding the play dough will obviously need a few seconds to think of what they will make. In play dough-tionary, as in Pictionary, making letters is not permitted. The team with the most points at the end wins. It may be helpful to keep hand sanitizer and/or baby wipes out so people can clean up both before and after they use the play dough. Play dough can also dry the skin, so you might want to keep a small bottle of lotion out. Encouraging people to clean their hands before using the play dough will extend it's life if people clean up after they use the play-dough, they are less likely to get it on your carpet, furniture or their own clothing.

For play dough to work at your next gathering, you may need a bit of advanced planning, but you may find that once you start incorporating this twist, you may never want to go back to the original. To make play dough a part of our games and fun as adults is to bring back some of the joy of childhood, and that definitely makes it worth the trouble.

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