Dough Experiment 4 Mud Dough

 "Mud" or Chocolate Playdough

When I saw the picture for the recipe for this playdough, I immediately thought Nick would love it.  It was brown dough with little bug toys strewn about on it.  Well, my son loves bugs.  LOVES them.  He picks up foot long worms from the backyard, caterpillars and millipedes too. He holds grasshoppers the size of his hand, and has had butterflies land on him, sweet boy.  I was particularly excited about this project.  It is playdough with cocoa in it to give it that rich, brown, muddy color (and glorious smell).

I made the dough and all of a sudden decided to change the theme, why exactly, I don't know, but I gathered his construction books, tractors and machines, some pretend rocks and trees, and his hard hat for him to don while playing. He has been going through a huge phase of loading toys of all types into his ride on dump truck, rolling it off to another location and dumping it out, and repeating this over and over again.  He does it outside too with a shovel, another dump truck and dirt or mulch. So, I figured he would really enjoy doing it on a smaller scale.

And boy did he ever.  He played for around an hour and fifteen minutes.  He'd still be there playing if I hadn't forced him to stop. He loved it so much. The bargaining had begun because we had a play date at a friend's house and we were for sure going to be unforgivably late.  I felt so bad, because he was having so much fun. But I know that we will definitely do this activity over and over again.

I know that his enjoyment had more to do with the theme rather than the actual dough, so I guess the point is, if you child has a keen interest in something at the moment, or in general, focus in on it. What fun they will have. An hour and fifteen minutes focusing on one activity! If I were reading this about somebody else's child I probably wouldn't believe them, but I tell you it's true.

Recipe (originally found here)

This is half of the original recipe. If you want enough for more kids, double the recipe below.

2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of cocoa (powdered)

1 1/2 tbsp cream of tartar

2 1/2 cups water

 1 1/4 cup of salt

5 tablespoons of cooking oil (such as canola or vegetable)

Add the dry ingredients to a large pot and mix.  Then add the oil and water. Cook on stovetop at medium heat stirring all the while until the dough pulls and gathers into a ball.  Turn out onto wax paper until cool enough to knead. Knead until proper consistency.

I asked Nick if he liked the smell.  It smelled like warm, baked chocolate- mmm.  He sniffs then replies "it smells hairy." Hum, I'll leave you to ponder the inner workings of an almost 3 year old's mind.