Toddler fun

H's new found love....PLAY-DOUGH!!! Seeing her older brother playing with play-dough H started joining in the fun. Now, sometimes in the middle of the day if she finds the rawdah door open, she goes and get the play-dough zip-lock and brings it to me (telling me to open it for her).

Play with play-dough has great benefits for children

• Builds fine-motor skills
• Strengthening their muscles
• Promotes creativity without boundaries (since there is no one way to play with play-dough)

What are some benefits you find playing with play-dough?

Aromatherapy Play-dough

Next thing with play-dough I would like to do/try are the essential oil play-doughs, buy them or even better try to make them at home. Will share if I do make them, meanwhile checkout these aromatherapy play-dough. You can even find gluten free play-dough for children with allergies.

Homemade play-dough dye

Forest berries (color and smell), turmeric with mango essence, green tea leaves and beet root.

Yesterday I was boiling beetroot for my daughter to eat. Since I was young I use to love the beautiful color of beetroot. So, while it was boiling I thought why not use this water to make PLAY-DOUGH! it would make a like a natural food dye. So I followed the play-dough recipe and made the play-dough. It turn out awesome! It gave the the play-dough elegant twist! I also added rose water to make it smell pleasant.

Beetroot...SubhanAllah... isn't the color just sooo AMAZING!! NO artificial dye could be compared to this!!

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After this I wanted to see if I could come up with more natural dyes. I could only think of Turmeric and strawberries. So I went on the net and guess what I found!! this awesome blog "Mini Eco" she has the most amazing ideas! She has a fuzzy experiment that I had posted about earlier as well (with better illustrations of-course). I am in love with her ideas (Allah yahdeehaa), can't wait to try them. I really enjoy Eco-friendly and toxic free things for the house and kids

Go check out the blog!

Please share any ideas you may have!

NOTE: in her recipe she says to cool the dye water, I poured it hot into the dry ingredients, it turned out great...make sure to knead it well.

Play-dough numbers

We bought these play-dough number cutters the kids, for only 2 RIYALS!!

AR had a great fun/learning experience. Its a great way to teach counting and number recognition. The set also included addition subtraction, multiplication and division cutters to teach Math at a later stage inshaAllah.

Homemade play-dough

We made play-dough at home with AR's helping hand, he enjoyed making it a lot and also playing with it. I really like play-dough for AR because he has very delicate fingers and playing with play-dough, kneading it and making things out of it helps him strengthen his finger muscles and fine motor skills. Alhumdulillah he loves playing with play-dough!

Even our daughter H loves playing with it and sometimes EATING it! Alhumdulillah it's non-toxic so no worries... but it still has lots of germs!! She will get use to not eating it.

Play-dough recipe for those interested. Why buy those toxic play-doughs when you can do-it-yourself at home!

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup salt
• 4 tbsp cream of tartar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• Food coloring

Instructions

Combine the flour, water, salt, cream of tartar, and oil in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. When the play-dough begins to form a ball, it's cooked. Cool for five minutes and then knead in food coloring. 

I divided the dough in 4 balls and then added vanilla essence, mango essence and coco powder with the food coloring.

Learing and playing

We used  play-dough to learn letters and to learn the shapes of the letters.

we used fridge magnets to imprint the letters in play-dough.

 My letters kept getting stuck in the alphabet frame, so AR taught me how to press it in gentle and lift slowly!

We made letters out of play-dough

We also wrote letters on a ziplock which I filled up with hair gel and added a few drops of food coloring. Initially it took him some time to learn how to press on the gel to make letters or shapes. We also used the decor crystals to trace the letters we had made by pressing on the gel filled ziplock.