My husband was right. I was wrong.
Cloud dough: I had visions of Alec sitting with his hands in the bin exploring the texture of the cloud dough we made and building little sand castles. My husband said we would have cloud dough all over the flat. To be fair, it wasn’t all over the flat, only all over the kitchen, but this is definitely not a tidy little activity, at least not if you are attempting it with quite a young toddler. But it is fun.
Click past the break for how-tos and pictures of the mess!
Cloud dough is crazy easy to make: just mix eight parts regular flour with one part oil. We used olive oil which had a pleasing scent and left the “dough/sand” an inviting color. Use your hands to mix and add a little more oil or flour as necessary to get the consistency you want. It ends up being a little like wet sand, but dry somehow.
Start by gathering all your materials. We did this in the kitchen on top of a wax table cloth on the floor. We used a plastic tub that has a lid so we can store our sand for future play. Alec helped to measure out the flour and olive oil and then just got right in there.
I guess I was naive to think he would keep all the sand in the tub. He did not. But clean-up was actually quite easy. We just put Alec in a bath, all of our clothes in the wash, and vacuumed up the mess. I would recommend giving your child smaller utensils and molds etc to work with rather than bigger. Alec had some bigger stuff in the beginning but that just made the sand go flying.
We played with this for less than an hour (due to mess and dinnertime) but I think this could keep a toddler busy for a really long time.
