Play dough Gum Trees

Do your kids love to play with play dough? Mine just adore it, they get very creative and it does get messy.  So expecting mess I set them up in the backyard with the dough and things to play with the dough, cutters and rolling pins and so on.

One of my girls decided not to play with any of the extra things I provided,  she decided to get bits of plants and put them into balls of play dough. This creation was called a gum tree. I know it was not a gum tree but it was very clever none the less. My little creative girl was very insistent that it was a gum tree, I did explain, but decided to leave her to her creations.

So if you would like to do this to keep your kids entertained this is what you need to do:

1. Have play dough, it is so easy to make your own and you can create any colours – You can find a great recipe from Mckenzie’s Foods, I think the magic ingredient is their Cream of Tartar. Adding Cream of Tartar seems to make the play dough nice soft and gives it a great texture, try it you will see the difference.

2. Once you have the play dough give to kids to create balls to place things in it to resemble trees or flowers.

3. Kids can pick things from the yard, flowers, weeds, or leaves to stick in the playhouse.

4. Imagination is key, anything is possible. How about getting sticks, glitter, or anything that you think would work will add magic to the play dough gum trees.

Now leave the kids to create a forest with their new weird and wonderful trees and flowers. How about keeping your creations to create a town or even as gifts. This creative task had the twins busy for hours. I managed to get a bit done without interruption and I was happy as well as the girls so a win win.

Do you kids create great works in play dough? What are some of the great things that have been created? Send in your comments and why not continue the discussion on our Twitter or Facebook pages.