Use the following recipe to make play dough. I used this recipe for 4 children and with the process I used the children learned measurements, division, fractions, and following a recipe. 4 cups flour
1 cup of salt
1 1/4 cups of water
you will need more water but start with this)
food coloring
If you wish to just make play dough, then first add food coloring to your water according to what color you would like your dough. Then mix the flour and salt together and stir into water. Add additional water to reach the consisitency that you would like your dough. If you would like to incorporate learning into this project here are the steps I followed:
1. Present the recipe to the children (I was working with 4 children)
2. Explain that each child will make their own portion of the recipe, but that it has to be broken down into 4 equal parts (or however many parts for the number of children you are working with)
3. Ask them how can we make this recipe smaller so that each person has the same amount?
4. Use some sort of counters (pennies, beans, etc...) to demonstrate how to divide. I placed one pile of 16 beans in the middle of the table and explained that we needed 4 equal piles to represent each child. I let the children collaborate to get the 4 equal piles.
5. I then gave each child an old cool whip container with a lid. I also placed measuring cups on the table. I asked them how they could equally divide the 1 1/4 cup of water amongst themselves. They quickly figured out that they could use the 1/4 cup measuring cup to divide the 1 cup of water. The tricky part was dividing the 1/4 cup. Using the 4 equal piles of beans we determined that 1/4 would be the same as one pile of beans. Then we would need to divide that 1/4 pile into 1/4 again. This meant that 1 bean out of the 1/4 pile of beans would represent 1/4 of the 1/4 cup of water. We determined that would be equal to 1/16 cup of water. We then used a teaspoon measuring spoon to determine how many teaspoons were in a 1/4 cup and then divided that number by 4.
6. Each child then measured out 1/4 cup and 1/16 cup of water into their container.
7. We then added food coloring to our water.
8. In the step of adding food coloring the kids explored mixing primary colors to get other colors that they wanted. Different combinations of red and blue make different shades of purple. Different combinations of red and yellow made different shades of orange.
9. We then divided and mixed our flour and salt. Each child getting 1 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of salt.
10. They then added the flour and salt mixture to their water. First stiring with a spoon and eventually using their hands to mix.
11. More water was eventually added by the teaspoon, until our play dough reached the proper consistency.
12. Cool whip container with lid keeps your dough moist. Click here to find out what experiment our play dough will help us complete. |
