If you've been paying attention this week (hey, no judgment here if not) you've probably noticed that we are tackling projects to keep our toddlers preoccupied. A lot of these projects will work for older kids too, so don't tune out just yet! This is a great activity for all ages of kids - even - ahem - adults.
Have you ever seen a face like this?
Cloud dough is this awesome creation that you can make with just 2 ingredients - ingredients we all have on hand. Flour and oil. Don't get caught up in the specifics because this recipe is super forgiving. I used whole wheat pastry flour and vegetable oil. You can use baby oil, coconut oil or canola oil. You can use all purpose flour. It apparently doesn't matter much, as long as it's 8 parts flour to 1 part oil.
Most batches online use 8 cups of flour to 1 cup of oil. I wanted to start with a MUCH smaller batch (and, quite frankly, not waste too much of my whole wheat pastry flour!) so I used 2 c. flour and 1/4 c. oil. Worked great!
You'll just add both ingredients to a container and stir! I used a combination of a whisk and a pastry cutter to get a nice, fine, sand like texture. Apparently this is a lot like Moon Sand, which you can buy at the store. Once your flour and oil are mixed, they have this nice, fine, soft texture that is a lot like a soft sand - but you can mold it into shapes, and it holds its shape until you crumble it apart and start over.
See that picture on the bottom right? My little man who has a love/hate relationship with eating things like homemade play dough and cloud dough. He'll make a disgusted face but will keep doing it. That's why I went with vegetable oil and not baby oil. I knew it would be going right into the mouth at some point!
I found this recipe over at Juggling with Kids.
From what I've read, you can store your cloud dough in an airtight container for weeks and weeks and months and months. I'll monitor our little stash and keep you posted!
Have you ever made cloud dough or played with moon sand?
