Color Surprise Play Dough

I usually make a batch of homemade play dough every two weeks or so and this week I made 

Color Surprise Play Dough!

This play dough has the color "hidden" inside, where the color is then revealed after they start playing with it. The more they play with it, the more the color spreads and the brighter it becomes!  

How to make Color Surprise Play Dough

for homemade playdough, I usually use the general recipe as follows:

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/2 cup salt

1 tablespoon cream of tartar

1 tablespoon oil 

In a heavy saucepan, mix together all the ingredients, stirring constantly until mixture thickens and forms a large lump or ball. (approx. 3 min) Remove from heat and set on a sheet of wax or parchment paper to let cool for a bit, then knead until smooth. 

To hide the color, I simply separated the dough and rolled it into 6 small balls. I poked a hole into each ball with my finger and then put a few drops of food coloring into each hole. Then I carefully molded the hole closed. I put them separately into plastic baggies and waited until the next day to give them to the boys. 

This was so the food coloring could soak into the play dough a bit and maybe not stain their hands so badly. 

It worked too! No stains at all! 

You could also add color and scent by using Kool-aid rather than food coloring. 

A hidden rainbow of colors waiting to be discovered! 

When they first started playing with each play dough ball, the colors were marbled. We had days of fun with our rainbow play dough and by the end of the week, the colors were even and bright!

L is really into making play dough snakes, so I printed THIS RAINBOW PRINTABLE, so he could get some snake practice in and use all of our new colors to make a play dough rainbow! 

and now we have a fun batch of rainbow play dough to last us quite a while! 

It would even make a great Easter basket addition :)

After posting this and pinning it to my Pinterest Board, I now see that Teach Preschool did the same thing back in June of 2012 (actually named it the very same thing-FIRST), so make sure you check out Teach Preschool's Play Dough Color Surprise Play Dough that she did with her Preschoolers, using another cool way to color the play dough! 

Wanna try a totally NEW and FUN Play Dough Recipe?!

Click the photo below!

More Ways to Follow the Fun!