Home made sensory play dough - Scents and Textures.

Using our simple home made recipe, make your plain play dough as normal - HERE

We experimented with scent and texture to make a real sensory play activity of them.They smelt almost good enough to eat, so do be careful as some as mine wanted to eat the chocolate in particular and although they won't do any harm being homemade and non-toxic they are a bit salty! Here is what we made:

Marzipan Mess - We added almond oil to scent
Peppermint Dream - We added peppermint oil to scent
Chocolate Fudge - We added cocoa powder to not only scent the play dough but colour it too
Orange Cream - We added orange oil to scent and orange peel to add texture.
Strawberry Shortcake - We added strawberry essence to scent and glitter for added visual effect.

Mixed Spice bomb - We added mixed spice to scent and cloves pushed in for texture.
Cinnamon Hedgehog - We added cinnamon powder to scent and cinnamon sticks to add texture.
Beaded bliss - We added beads (simple one!)
Basil Ball - We added Basil Oil to scent and Basil leaves for texture.
Glitter Moon Rock - A huge favourite. We added edible glitter (as it is much finer) to Black/ Blue dough for that cool visual effect.

The kids then just set about playing with the dough as they saw fit, there was no set rules of what they 'should' be and it was fun to see where it took their imagination.

1 year old enjoyed just touching and manipulating the textured dough, helping develop motor skills.
2 year old asked for cookie cutters and started 'baking' with hers. She was very much led by the scented ones and produced some lovely strawberry cupcakes, cookies and a box of chocolates.
6 year old produced a huge 'planets' scene and started acting out various imaginary scenarios with aliens and monsters.

Yes, that is my one year old having a little taste. All part of the experience. He soon realised
it didn't taste so nice!

Same dough, so many different play ideas!