Continuing our fairy week, here’s how to make a simple fairy house to go in your fairy land.
The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book
The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book is the perfect beginner’s guide to making, playing and learning with play dough.
Every childhood needs play dough! It’s the perfect sensory play material and lets your children build vital math, literacy, and fine motor skills all through play.
This practical book will give you easy homemade play dough recipes PLUS 52 play dough activities that incorporate sensory play, fine motor skills, math, literacy, and imagination.
Suitable for teachers, childcarers, and parents with children aged 2 to 8.
Written by Cathy James, the author of The Garden Classroom and the creator of NurtureStore.
50+ play dough recipes and activities
You will be able to set up sensory learning activities your children love to help them develop vital skills through play, including:
Snowman Play Dough
Wake-Up Dough
Math Tangrams
Small World Diggers
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Valentine Lollipops
Heart Bunting
Mark Making with Play Dough
Candy Store Play Dough
Toothpick Math
Chocolates Play Dough
Spring Chicks
Scissor Skills Activities
Real Bread Making
Chocolate Play Dough Cupcakes
Under The Sea Play Dough
Salt Dough Bead Bracelets
Princess Pink Play Dough
Garden Flower Play Dough
Spot The Tracks Activity
Play Dough Art Station
Play Dough Fractions
Shape Matching Jigsaws
Ice Cream Parlour Play
Design a Fish Challenge
Art Mural Making
Big & Small Exploration
Play Dough Bake Off
Alphabet Dough Activities
Chill Out Lavender Play Dough
Animal Habitats
Seaside Play Dough
Making Caterpillars
Making Butterflies
Birds and Nests
Seashell Play Dough
Gingerbread Men
Pizza Parlour Play
Cinnamon Leaf Prints
Outer Space Play Dough
Autumn Trees
Diwali Salt Dough Candle Holders
Rangoli Mandals
Play Dough Spiders
Scary Monster Play Dough
Drinking Straw Exploration
Colour Mixing Experiments
Christmas Salt Dough Candle Holders
Christmas Spice Play Dough
Christmas Trees
Christmas Angels
Winter Landscapes
Click here to get your copy of The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book Beginner’s Guide for $14.99 or save $10 with our bonus pack below.
BONUS: add The Amazing Play Dough Printables Pack and save $10
Upgrade your Beginner’s Guide To Play Dough and get The Amazing Play Dough Printables Pack too. It’s the perfect pairing!
The Amazing Play Dough Printables Pack gives you a whole year of play dough printables: 180 play mats covering over 50 themes and topics.
Simply print, add play dough, and play!
No hassle, no planning, you’ll always have an activity on hand.
You can use these play mats:
- for sensory play sessions
- to build fine motor skills
- in finger gyms and welcome activities
- with loose parts play
- in classroom centers, to fit year-round themes
- for play dates, rainy days, snow days, and after school
- while you cook, do laundry, read a book, and drink that coffee while it’s still hot
- and anytime your children say ‘I’m bored!”
Combine the play mats with The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book and you’ll never run out of play dough ideas!
Buy The Amazing Play Dough Printable Pack now with The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book for only $34.99 $24.98 and save $10.
Click here to save $10 and get them both
Every child needs play dough!
Play dough is the perfect sensory play material because it’s great for all ages. My daughters are teenagers now and they’ve been using play dough since they were around two years old. As they’ve grown, the ways they use play dough have evolved.
Very young children may enjoy simply having some dough to explore – they need few added extras to enjoy squashing and squeezing the sensory dough. Using the recipes in The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book to make your own play dough, means you know exactly what’s in it, so you can you be sure it’s safe for your child.
Toddlers and pre-schoolers love to have props added to turn the dough into play scenes and role play opportunities. Listen in and you will hear their language develop as they play. Play dough also helps to build vital fine motor skills and hand strength, so children can go on to write and draw well.
Older children can let their imaginations take flight, using the dough to mould models and create intricate play lands. They’ll be developing storytelling, problem-solving, and scientific thinking as they play.
Dough is even great for adults. Baking a loaf of bread is great therapy after a stressful day and play dough is also used in many physiotherapy practices to keep fingers nimble and maintain muscle strength.
Once you’ve made home made play dough using the recipes in this book, you won’t want to switch back to store-bought. Making your own dough is quick, easy, and very inexpensive. It allows you to add in lots of colour, scent and textures that you just can’t get from a shop. Plus, you know exactly what’s in it and you can keep it all plastic-free and compostable.
A DIY version also allows you to make bigger quantities of the dough, giving your children a generous amount of material to play with so they can really go for it and imagine, create, and enjoy.
With every knead, squash, and moulding of dough your children are working on their fine motor skills; developing strength, control, and flexibility in their fingers, hands, and wrists. This paves the way for
successfully holding a pencil to write, fastening buttons, tying shoe laces or playing piano.
The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book is also full of activity ideas that show you how to include counting, sums, fractions and size in your play. The variety of materials we use brings lots of extra vocabulary into play, and you will see how play dough small worlds and imaginative role-playing burst into lots of chat, questions, and speech development.
Combine the recipe book with The Amazing Play Dough Printables Pack and you have the perfect beginner’s guide to play dough and you’ll never run out of engaging play dough ideas.
A beginner’s complete guide to play dough
- The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book
- The Amazing Play Dough Printables Pack
- Tried-and-true recipes including classic, no-cook, gluten-free, salt dough, cloud dough, real bread dough, and modelling dough
- 52 play dough activities for sensory play, fine motor skills, language, math, and imaginary play, for every week of the year
- PLUS 180 play dough mats, including math, literacy, animals, festivals and themes – you’ll never be short of a brilliant play dough idea
- for ages 2-ish to 8+
Get your beginner’s guide to play dough here:
$34.98 $24.98
Click here to get only The Homemade Play Dough Recipe Book for $14.99
Click here to get only The Amazing Play Dough Printables Pack for $19.99
Click here to get BOTH for only $34.98 $24.98. You save $10!
Make a pumpkin house! :: imaginary play
Having the right things, in the right places can really help to spark children’s imagination. Pulling in play dough, art and imaginary play, here’s how to turn a pumpkin into a house!
How to make a pumpkin house
Watch our Playdough Masterclass
Click play on the video above to see our playdough masterclass.
This video gives you everything you ever wanted to know about play dough: how to make homemade playdough with quick and easy recipes; the benefits of playdough for children; and lots of sensory play activities using play dough including playdough math activities, playdough literacy activities, and playdough fine motor skills activities.
Plus find out how to get printable playdough recipe cards and printable play mats. It’s an excellent beginners guide to play dough!
Subscribe to NurtureStore’s YouTube channel to get more gardening and nature study videos!
I have a special fondness for pumpkins. I’ve dreamed of having a pumpkin patch since I was a child, and this year, for the first time, we had the space to grow some of our own. They’re so pretty, and these small ones are so tactile, that we couldn’t resist using one for some play. Don’t you think they’re just the right size and shape for a fairy house?
I think carving pumpkins isn’t the best way to decorate them if you want the children to be involved: it’s difficult for them to carve them safely and successfully, and once they have been carved they soon start to go soft and mushy. So, we decided to draw on the outside of ours using permanent markers. This way there’s no cutting into the pumpkin, so it will last for ages, for lots of play. {And if we decide we want to eat it later, we could still scoop out the insides.}
Then to go with our house, we pulled in lots of bits and bobs from past playtimes to create an imaginary land. We used the paintings we made with acorns, cut them out and stuck them to some paper rolls with a bit of double-sided sticky tape….
and made some gorgeous autumn trees.
These dolls were last seen when we made a fairy land.
We added in our homemade autumn play dough, along with some natural loose parts…
and made a forest.
My daughter decided one of the fairies was actually Baba Yaga, the bony-legged witch, in disguise, and set about re-telling the whole story, creating extra props when she needed them – like the play dough trees which she needed to make her deep, deep forest.
The result: a fantastic imaginary play time, full of creativity and language and storytelling – all from things around the house. Play doesn’t need to be complicated – but creative play can really be encouraged by having the right kind of materials, in the right places, available to your children.
Sand pit fairy garden :: small worlds play
Do your children like to create and play with small worlds? My girls always have one or two landscapes on the go at any one time. Today B made a fairy garden in the sand pit which she declared ‘the sweetest thing I’ve ever made’ – so I had to show it to you. It’s lovely, and also a good reminder that the simplest of ‘loose parts’ and a child’s imagination can combine to create great things.
Sand pit fairy garden for small world play [Read more…]
Where fairies go on holiday :: seashell fairy houses
Where do fairies go on holiday? To stay in seashell cottages by the sea! Here’s a sweet little craft idea that turns into imaginary play and storytelling.
Fairy houses made from seashells [Read more…]
Dragon small world :: messy play
Welcome to a brand new feature on NurtureStore! I’m thrilled to be joined by a group of fabulous guest writers, who will be bringing us their take on fun play ideas. I’ve invited some of my favourite bloggers over to share with us ideas their children love. There will be a whole mix of activity ideas in the series, so please read along, enjoy the ideas, and hop over their blogs to discover more.
Starting off our new series, we have Asia, with a fun messy play idea :: a dragon small world!
