I love Halloween and all holidays! My youngest and I recently made playdough bombs for his classmates, which I call them but probably not an appropriate name for something you send to school. These treats are also a trick because they are filled with little spiders, bats, or any other small Halloween toys you can find. This is a fun, hands-on activity with your elementary or preschool kids and can also be adapted for Christmas with different colors and scents like ginger.
1. Make a basic playdough recipe. Find mine below.
2. Add color and scent – This year, we did orange with pumpkin pie spice sprinkled in and a separate batch of dark purple (or you can do black) with Anise Extract added to smell like black licorice. I highly recommend wearing gloves and mixing them with your hands. Playdough feels amazing squeezing through your fingers and using your hands mixes the color and scents more evenly.
3. Divide the playdough into balls the size of small apples. The recipe below will give you about six balls a batch.
4. Flatten the balls you just made by pressing down on them with your hand. The playdough should be a couple of inches thick once flattened.
5. Sprinkle small Halloween trinkets/toys on the flattened playdough.
6. Form the playdough back into a ball. The trinkets you just added are in the center of the ball.
7. We bag them into individual Halloween treat bags and seal them, so air doesn’t dry the playdough.
The kids will be delighted to have the scented, fun playdough and surprised to find the treats you hid inside. Happy Halloween!
Playdough recipe
Highly recommend wearing disposable gloves. Makes about six playdough bombs.
· Heat 1 ¾ cup of water in the microwave for 3 mins
· Mix the following in a bowl:
o 2 cups all-purpose flour
o 1 cup salt
o 2 tbs. vegetable or canola oil
o 1 tbs. cream of tartar
· Add preferred food coloring to the hot water.
· Add hot water to the flour mixture.
· Add 1 tbs. of preferred scent (or more if you want a stronger fragrance)