Snow Dough!

We still have 6 days of school left until break so I am bringing in some reinforcement...

I found the recipe on this blog post from Dazzle Design via a recent Pinterest escapade and knew it was something I wanted to do with my students (and boys!).

The recipe does not call for many or 'off-the-wall-hard-to-find-expensive' ingredients!

You simply need:

*baking soda

*cornstarch

*warm water

*peppermint extract

SIMPLE!

So I gathered my supplies and got to work!

Put 2 cups of baking soda and 1 cup of cornstarch in a saucepan and stir to combine.

Add 1 1/2 cups of warm water and 1 teaspoon of peppermint extract.

Stir to combine over medium heat and bring to a boil.

NOW learn from my mistake!

My first batch I was afraid of burning and took it off the heat too early:

This is NOT what you want it to look like:

It was WAY too loose!

(Don't worry- I wound up saving it!  If you do this too, just put the mix back into the pot and heat for a bit longer until it thickens!)

SO, keep the mixture on the heat for a bit longer and just keep stirring.

As it starts to thicken and resemble 'frosting' remove it from the heat and continue to stir as it thickens.  

This is what is should look like:

And then pour it onto parchment paper (or straight on your counter) to cool

If you are pressed for time (like I was) you can pop it in the fridge

then take it out, knead it a bit and break into balls.

The recipe on Design Dazzle calls for iridescent glitter. I didn't have any (and I get nervous letting kids man-handle play with dough with glitter for fear of them wiping their eyes after) so I chose to leave it out!

Time to pack up the dough!

Put each ball into a bag (I had candy bags, but a ziploc would work too!) and tie it with ribbon.

I added this cute little tag (stapled it to the ribbon) so that they can take the tag home after then RIP the bag open and play with it!

Our dough is coming from our classroom elves, Harvey and Holly:

I'm going to let them play with it for a bit and then let them take the dough home.

My kindergartener took it for a trial run for me.  It was really cool and was easy to use to form a snowman:

I'm going to put out some beads, sequins and pipe cleaners so they can decorate their snowmen!

Want to bring in some snow dough?

I made 3 batches and it gave me 24 balls of snow.

You can grab the tag and note here:

I put a 'generic' note and a sample of my note in the free download.

I can't wait to share some pictures of my students using the dough and the creations they come up with!

We'll also be making 'candy cane' playdough later this week!

Come on back to see all the fun!

Until next post,