Aromatherapy Play Dough with Essential Oils

Time to take a look at our scented play dough!!

I always start with my favorite basic recipe:

1c. All-Purpose Flour

1c. Water

1/2c. Salt

1T Oil

1T Cream of Tartar

Add food coloring and scent of your choice

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the dough comes together in a ball and is no longer sticky.  Knead the dough for a few minutes until smooth.  Play!

Here are the variations we used:

Add 2-3 drops of Lavender Essential Oil and purple food coloring.  

Lavender can have a calming effect and it smells light and fresh.

Add 2-3 drops of Peppermint Essential Oil and green food coloring (I used the neon green).

Peppermint is refreshing and uplifting and can even soothe upset tummies - it was my morning sickness cure of choice during all three of my pregnancies. :)

Add 2-3 drops of Geranium Essential Oil and pink food coloring.

I have to be honest here and say I have never used my geranium oil except for making play dough, so I can't really speak to its health benefits.  I do know it is wonderful for the skin, however, and has an amazing smell!

Take a look at our other activities from this month, Colors! and 5 Senses!

5 Senses!

We're moving into week 3 of our lessons on colors and our 5 senses, so we still have lots of fun in store, but I want to share a few activities we've done so far.

Colorful maracas for a hearing-inspired craft.

Our DIY Montessori-Inspired Sound Bottles are back!!!

Textured paint - just add Epsom salt and end up with some lovely sparkly art!

So pretty!

Remember our Color Surprise play dough??  

It got a face lift when I added some googly eyes, rice, glitter, salt and sequins.

My wonderful friend, Amanda was kind enough to dig into her fabric collection and provide me with a variety of textured material.  We spent some time touching and describing each fabric to work on our descriptive language skills!

This is part of a Scent Sort Match Up Kit I purchased.  The kit comes with 30 different scent jars and cards, so I broke them into more manageable groups of 5 for the children to use independently.  These can get tricky, but we'll be expert smellers by the end of the month!

This week, we will be coloring on some textured paper I had left over from my scrap booking days.

Coming soon.....scented and edible play dough!!!

Colors!!

After this week, I can officially say #1: I'm exhausted and #2: I'm in LOVE with my new curriculum!  It's always tricky writing an entirely new curriculum from scratch and then attempting to implement it when neither the teacher nor the children have experienced it before, but after working out all the kinks in August, we've settled nicely into a routine and we're really starting to get into learning through play!

September at Seedlings is all about colors, 5 senses, descriptive language and finding out more about our friends and how we are alike and different.

We had a veritable color explosion this week, here is a look at what we did!

One of our sensory tables was completely filled with RED items!  I will switch the color each week, so we will also have a blue table, a green table and a yellow table this month.

Our other sensory table was filled with rainbow rice, which, of course, only looked like this for three seconds before it became this:

Still lovely!  And the most popular place in the classroom this week!

Part colors, part 5 senses; I created a rainbow water xylophone for a bit of musical fun.  A feast for eyes and ears!

Our second most popular activity this week was our color mixing tray.  I'm pretty sure I reset this tray about 15 times per class, but I was so thrilled every time I heard, "I made green!!" from that area.  This one will be switched out each week so we can create all of the secondaries and by the last week of September, the kiddos will have all three primaries to work with.

We start many of our days with play dough.  Everyone loves play dough and it's a great way to get the kiddos involved and talking immediately.  Our 5 Senses theme this month offers loads of options for play dough additions and this week I opted for Color Surprise play dough that I saw posted a while back here.  We start out with white dough with a surprise inside and as we play, we see it begin to change.

Eventually, the whole ball of play dough is a solid color.  I started with just primaries for my first class, but because I have multiple classes and different kiddos each day, I wanted everyone to have a chance to make a new color, so we eventually ended up with a fun mix of doughs.

Next week, these fun colors will be getting added textures!

Stay tuned for a look at our 5 Senses adventures later this month!!