Fun Valentine Craft for all ages!

You can't expect Valentine's day to come and go without a fun craft idea for all ages, can you? We love Play Doh. Well the kids do. They play and I clean up after it. But that's another story! Play Doh is one of those things that keeps all three kids busy for hours on end. It's something they can play with alone or with each other. I've made Play Doh before... have tried all different recipes but none seemed right. Christopher brought home some that he made in class not too long ago and it was perfect! Not too sticky and not too tough. It didn't stick to your hands. This dough was not a gooey blob that that was icky to the touch (couldn't think of a better word!) This dough was perfect... soft and pliable and not at all crumbly. I wrote Christopher's teacher and she kindly shared her recipe. Alexander and I made it the next day. Then I had an idea... we needed to bring in Valentines to the children in his class. We would bring home made Play Doh and package it up with a heart shaped cookie cutter and a copy of the recipe. We made two batches. The children will either get purple dough or pink dough. I think this is a great idea and will be a big hit!

Should you want to make it for a class or make it with your kids at home, a rainy day project just follow the simple steps below! This should take no more than 10 minutes start to finish!

Ingredients:

2 Cups of flour
2 Cups of water
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 tsp oil
1 cup of salt
Food coloring, optional

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in to a bowl and mix well with a spoon until well blended. Should you add a lot of food coloring, as I did for my pink dough, you may want to add an extra tablespoon of flour. Pour mixture into a saucepan and cook over low heat for 5 - 10 minutes, stirring regularly. The mixture should resemble bread dough. Remove from pan and cool. If the dough is too sticky, add and knead in powder until the dough is no longer sticky. Will feel like Play Doh when done. At first the smell is not pleasant, but this will disappear!

We made gift tags/recipe cards
I printed out the recipe and cut and pasted them on to index cards. I used a hole punch to punch a hole to tie the cards on to the gift bags. The small hearts were created by inserting Alexander's thumb onto an ink pad... we positioned the two thumb prints to resemble the shape of a heart. (Love this idea... not sure where it originated... could have been Martha Stewart's.)

Below, the finished product!