Play dough land

I have made plenty of play dough (or play clay - whichever way you prefer) over the last few years.  I have been very happy with the recipe I have but it always turned out a little gritty because of the salt.  My recipe had me adding the salt at the same time as the flour but I read somewhere ages ago (sorry, nameless person, I can't remember where) this recipe where they added the salt to the water first and heated it before adding the flour.  This seemed like a great idea as the salt might dissolve first and therefore solve my 'gritty' problem.  The only trouble with the recipe I was reading was I didn't want to add the flour to a hot liquid mixture as it seemed to me that would produce a very lumpy result.  So I just added the salt to the cold water and stirred for awhile until a lot of salt had dissolved (it doesn't all dissolve but enough does).  It worked like a dream and I ended up with beautifully soft and smooth play dough.  This is a great play dough for younger children too as I find many of them are too stiff for the little ones.

Here is the recipe and instructions if you want to print it out:  Homemade Play Dough (Play Clay).

Doesn't my picture up the top of this post look lovely?  That is the staged shot...  Here are the real play table happenings.  Ah, that is more like it!

Ewww, play dough intestines....

I used the salt from our layered salt activity which is why we have odd colours.  We are moving soon and I didn't want to waste our pretty salt.