Sparkly Winter Mint Play Dough

Winter Spearmint Playdough

January is the perfect time to dive into winter unit studies. Learning about snow, snowflakes, ice, and all that entails from animal behavior to winter fun! The dough is soft and has a bright fresh scent that your kids will love ( I enjoy digging into it a bit myself!). Keep your dough in the refrigerator when not in use to keep it fresh longer and also give them a little cold feeling to their “snowy” playdough for at least the first few minutes!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups of water
• ½ cup of salt
• 1 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar
• 2 Tablespoons oil- vegetable or coconut
• Spearmint essential oil or spearmint extract
• Glitter

Directions:

Place flour, water, oil, salt, and cream of tartar together all at once in a large saucepan.

Turn heat to just over medium and stir the mixture frequently with a wooden spoon.

Keep stirring until it begins to clump together on the spoon and looks like unrisen bread dough.

Remove from heat then stir in glitter and essential oil or extract whatever you are using.

Flip out onto the counter or another smooth surface. Allow it to cool until it is comfortable to the touch.

Once cooled enough to handle add more glitter if you desire and knead for 2 or 3 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

While you’ve got out all your tools, why not whip up a batch of our Candy Cane Playdough? Or maybe even our Gingerbread Playdough!

Add any tools you have on hand and watch the winter fun unfold. Craft sticks, rollers, snowflake cookie cutters, winter animals, or anything else you can think of.

This simple recipe is so beautifully open-ended that there are many ways you can incorporate it into any winter theme.

My favorite is to incorporate a living book to read aloud while they play, this Over and Under The Snow by Kate Messner tells the animals are doing throughout winter above and below the snow you see.

You can make snowflake patterns by cutting lightly into the dough with a craft stick.

Create a winter wonderland for these arctic animals to hide in.

Make snowballs and work on those fine motor muscles!

Add buttons, cloves, sticks, and beads to create snowmen and more! Pair this hands-on activity with our Free Arctic Animal Preschool Printables! We’ve got some fantastic coloring pages, crafts, games and more.