Aromatherapy Play Dough

We love our new church. Not only do we enjoy the worship music and the message we receive each week from the pastoral staff, we also love the way the volunteers there love on our children every week and plan fun things for them to do. This past week, Owen came home with his typical art project (a picture of a loaf of bread with oatmeal glued to it) and a Ziploc bag filled with white powder. The note attached to it said that the kiddos had learned about the story of the widow to whom God provided flour and oil for bread and that they had prepared a project involving flour and bread too - homemade playdough. 

I have never made playdough at home before, but I was excited to have a project to do with Owen and I am not one of those Pinterest moms that plans lots of crafts to do with him. If all the legwork is already done, I'm much more likely to do those types of things. The one thing I did change about the recipe was that I decided to try adding essential oils to the dough to provide extra sensory stimulation. And not only does it smell great, but the oils I chose also have the added benefit of some healthy side effects, like mood enhancement and stress relief. 

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 Tbsp. oil

1 cup water

Food coloring

Essential oils

Here's the recipe: 

Combine flour, salt, and cream of tartar in a medium saucepan. Add water and oil (the recipe called for vegetable oil, but I didn't have it so I used olive oil and it turned out fine). Turn on the stovetop to medium and stir constantly until it gets lumpy. Add 3-5 drops of food coloring and continue stirring until dough forms a ball. I actually split my dough in half and dumped half in another pan so I could do two colors from the same batch. 

Once the dough had cooled, I then added about 10-15 drops of my chosen essential oils. I decided on orange and a blend called Stress Away. I just poked little dents in the play dough and added the oils and then balled the dough up so it was mixed throughout. 

Orange essential oil is great for mood. It is antidepressant and can promote relaxation. Stress Away is a great blend that includes lime and vanilla scents. When I am at the end of my patience and counting down the seconds until Tim gets home from work, I typically diffuse this blend. Now I can play with Owen and give him some undivided attention (which generally clears up any behavioral issues) all while mashing out some of my frustration and breathing in the relaxing scent. If I were to make another couple batches, I would probably do a lavender scented purple dough, great for pre-naptime calming, and a lemon scented yellow dough, good for energy and focus. 

Make sure the dough is completely cool before letting your kids play with it. I stored mine in 4 ounce mason jars. Hopefully they will last a long time that way. 

All kids love playdough, but I hate the store-bought kind. It smells and it dries up easily, not to mention Owen is always trying to eat it. What's up the that? This way, I at least know all the ingredients are edible so the next time I see blue in his teeth I don't have to scold him so much about eating the stuff.  

Little dude loves the stuff. He is a big fan of essential oils (gotta train 'em young) and got a big kick out of smelling them. Surprisingly, he didn't try to eat any of it. Which was shocking since they smell good enough to eat. 

Since this was such a success, I fully intend to toss out all our old playdough. From now on I will just make it. I never realized it would be so super easy.  

We had a great time playing with our new playdough the other day. It has a good consistency, smells awesome, and dare I say it... I felt much more relaxed and happy after we played with it.