This is our first year in Wyoming. I'm a bit disappointed at the moment! It's the middle of December, and it's 60 degrees outside. I was expecting to be snowed in for three months straight or something, I'm not really sure, but I suppose I was expecting way more snow than what we have had so far. That's not to say we haven't had our fair share of cold days recently. A few weeks ago it was -25 wind chill for about 6 days straight, and then, out of nowhere, it was 60 degrees again. Nature is sure being crazy this year, and I think that's true for much of the country! So, what's a child to do!? No snow! No snow angels! No snow men! This can't be happening!
Also, I must confess, I did not create this idea, I saw it floating around the internet lately, and I saw an opportunity to unload a bunch of these plastic containers that I have been getting with our lunch meat (btw, that is so awesome to get a new reusable container with every Hilshire Farms lunch meat, I love it, we use them to pack lunches and store cat food for thawing...and all sorts of stuff).
So, I got some "fuzzy sticks" ($0.97) for scarves, some googly eyes ($2) (they were out of the little size, but this will do), some wooden sticks ($2), some very fine white glitter ($3?), some flour ($2), some cream of tartar ($2?), some salt ($1), sticky labels ($4 for the package, but I only needed about 1/6 of the package), containers salvaged from lunch meat, and some water.
Don't mind the messy pot, this was batch #2 or 3 that I finally remembered to take a picture. Not sure why, we all know how to put water in a pot. Basically what I did was I put 4 cups of water in the pot, 1 cup of salt, and brought it to a simmer.
You can't see the sparkles, but there are a ton! Here I have 4 cups of flour (just cheap all purpose is perfect for this), 4 tsp cream of tartar, and about 4 tsp of this awesome glitter, add more or less to your liking.
Once the water is starting to simmer, and the salt is dissolved, add the flour, and stir. It's going to be sticky at first, and it'll thicken up really fast. It'll get hard to stir, but keep going. It'll start to ball up soon, and when it does, go just a bit more and then dump out the lump.
Then, you need to be way more careful than me! This stuff is super hot, and I really did burn my hands pretty good on it. I'm not sure what I did so differently (I used to make this at my daycare all the time, and it just seemed to go so much easier and no burnt hands). So, let it sit for a bit, and when it's cool enough to work, you need to knead it together to make it all a nice consistency. Cooked play dough is seriously so easy, and it is the best play dough ever (if you haven't already, you also need to try kool-aid play dough, but that's another day).
For each batch, I separated it into about 5 containers. I made 4 batches in total, my son has a large class. I took the fuzzy sticks and cut them in half with some crazy cutting tool I found in the garage (there are mysterious and wondrous things in the garage). Each container has two eyes, two sticks for arms, one bead (my daughter donated some from her bead collection) for a nose (you could use buttons, beads, orange colored sticks, pom poms, etc) and one fuzzy stick. If you would like to save more money here, you really could use scrap fabric for the scarf, you could use found objects or thinks like beans or pebbles for the yes and nose...you could even add some more for mouths and buttons down the belly. But this is all I added to mine.
On the labels, I wrote "Do you want to build a snow man?" (think of the song). I realize that I could have used my printer, but I really didn't want to be fussing with it, and hand-writing things is sometimes fun in this digital age we live in.
Don't judge, I threw him together quite quickly just to show you.
I think the children are going to have a lot of fun. I'm going to deliver this heavy box of snowman kits to my son's class tomorrow. I think they will have a lot of fun. After all, who doesn't love play dough?
'Til next time,
-Sue
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