With Easter right around the corner, I thought I’d do some Easter Themed Toddler play with Molly. The lovely Nia from Our Nature Cure, posted a simple cloud dough recipe on her Instagram stories. It got me wanting to make some for myself. I made a small batch as a tester and could not believe how simple and easy it is to make. You don’t need a lot of ingredients to make and it is something that you can get the tiny humans involved in making too!
For the Cloud dough recipe you will need;
4 cups Flour
1 cup Oil
Sidewalk Chalk of different colours.
Directions
– You get your 4 cups of flour and place in a large bowl.
– Add your 1 cup of oil and mix well until completely combined.
– If you want different coloured cloud dough, equally separate into bowls.
– Grate chalk of desired colour into the bowl and mix well.
The texture is a like pastry. It will hold together is you squish it in your hand, but then crumble again if you rub it. you can add more flour or more oil to get the desired texture.
Once the cloud dough was ready, I started to set up a little play activity for Molly. We decided to set it up in the garden as the weather was pretty decent for early April. Liam managed to get all the Easter stuff that we have bought over the years out of the loft, so we could make use of it as we don’t buy anything plastic anymore. I got out her tuff spot and started to put things together.
Setting up the Activity…
We located her “That’s not my bunny” book, but couldn’t find her chick one. No idea where that’s gone! It didn’t matter too much though as the rabbit book went perfectly with a pair of bunny ears that we had, along with reusing the snowball from a Christmas sensory pack, but making it into a bunny tail!
Then, I grabbed the felt basket that we had and filled it full of all the little Easter bits we had. Glittery mini eggs, pastel coloured pompoms and those little pompom chicks and bunny’s. Everything popped in together fer her to rummage through and explore.
Once that was all ready, I got to setting up the cloud dough. I was going to put it straight on the tuff spot, but decided to try and contain it a little bit. So, I decided to pop it onto the lid of the box from the loft as it made the perfect tray. I tried to keep the colours as separate as possible. I then found a coloured egg to match each colour of the cloud dough and placed it on top. We used this to explore and learn about colours and matching them. Along side the cloud dough, I gathered up a few “tools” for her to use. Wooden spoon, scoops, a whisk.
Once that was all set up, we were ready to roll!
Time to play…
Molly loved this activity. She was standing by the back door shouting at me to let her out! The first thing she went for was of course, the cloud dough! She quickly working out that if she squished it together, it would stay together, along with being able to scoop it up and throw it into the air! We kept saying the colours to her to try and incorporate some colour recognition. We would point to each colour and say it, then a few moments later ask Molly where the blue egg was, and she would point to it. She got a few wrong and a few right as well as said the world “blue”, so I’ll take that!
Next was the basket. Pulling out each item one at a time we counted them. Molly can say the number “two” but that’s it at the moment. We will say “one…” and she will continue to say “two” for every number after that. She LOVED putting each item onto the tray with the cloud dough and mixing them all up together. Scooping everything up and then tipping it out, followed by a super cute “uh-oh”.
She then discovered the book, bunny ears and the tail. Liam put the ears on her head, but they were swiftly removed and thrown with some force, so that was the end of that! Then she saw the tail, hugged it and then ran away with it laughing. Liam chased her around the garden, and then they proceeded to play a game of catch with it.
Exploring…
The one thing she was completely fascinated by, was one of the tiny pompom bunnies. She was inspecting it closely, pulling at its ears and chatting away to herself. We read the book together, touching all the different materials ( she knows where they all are now so needs no help with finding them anymore ) Its crazy how long she was just sat there exploring this tiny pompom bunny. She may or may not of attempted to eat it at one point, but she soon realised it didn’t taste all that great!
After that, we went back to the cloud dough, mixing everything together and filling up the plastic eggs with cloud dough, closing them and then handing them to each of us, as if it was a gift from her. We sat back and let her do her own things for the last 20-30 mins.
Watching her play and talk away to herself make my heart burst. To see all that imagination, and her in her own little world was just something else. Pure joy.
Have you done any Easter themed play or have any planned? Maybe have a go at making some of your very own cloud dough! I’d love to see what you get up to!
Happy Easter!
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