Sensational Learning with Penguin

Today’s advent activity was first making and then playing with this lovely lump of playdough!

Penguin wasn’t involved hands-on in the making, but he kept checking on my progress throughout, and was very keen to get stuck in as soon as the dough came out of the saucepan.

To give this playdough a scent of Christmas, I used a spiced tea and some citrus peel. These are all the ingredients needed (for making a very good sized lump like our’s):

• 2,5 dl flour
• 1 dl salt
• 2 tsp Cream of Tartar
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2,5 dl tea
• the skin of a clementine (and/or other citrus fruit)
• A few drops of food colouring (yellow and red)

I started by brewing a strong cup of tea. The tea I used has cinnamon and dried citrus peel in it. I also added extra peel from a clementine to brew in the hot tea, to enhance the scent. Penguin is very keen on clementines at the moment (and especially loves to peel them and eat the skin!), so I wanted to give the dough a good waft of that. The warm orange colour came partially from the tea, and complements the scent well, I think. A few drops of food colouring was added to brighten it up.

To make the playdough, put all the dry ingredients in a saucepan and give them a stir (no heat yet), then remove the bits of citrus peel from the brew before adding all wet ingredients into the pan. Stir the mix over a fairly low heat until it comes together, looking playdough-like. Tip it out on a clean surface (we used a plate) and let it cool down for a few seconds before kneeding it. Then let play begin!

Next time we do this I’m going to try using slightly less salt and a bit more citrus peel, plus probably a little bit of ground cinnamon, to further enhance the Christmas scent. And perhaps a bit of ginger, too?

If you’ve got a favourite recipe for playdough, or maybe slime or moon sand, we’d love to hear about it in the comments! 😀