3 Ways to Play
Fairy Dough is SO incredibly easy to make – all you will need is hair conditioner and cornflour (or cornstarch in America). It is really versatile and doesn’t necessarily need an exact recipe because you can adapt your play according to the texture you might like. Also, whatever room you are playing in will smell absolutely amazing afterwards because of the conditioners scent! Here are three of our favourite ways to play with Fairy Dough:
Classic
This classic fairy dough recipe will form a dough that is super soft and silky to touch and will mould into a particular shape using cutters or your imagination! The dough is very soft so shapes might not hold for long like play dough shapes do but cutters work well and it’s magical because it moulds well and it can be stretchy – which children love! Use this dough with dough cutters and tools, cookie cutters, craft sticks and play dough mats.
You will need:
- 1/2 cup of any hair conditioner (Purchase a cheap one! You can easily find these in the pound shop/dollar store)
- 2.5 cups of cornflour, or cornstarch
- Optional: Food colour, glitter
Instructions:
- Measure the hair conditioner into a large mixing bowl along with the food colour and glitter if you are choosing to use these.
- Add the cornflour, 1 cup at a time and start mixing
- When the dough starts to come together, switch to kneading with your hands until perfect and it’s that easy!
Top tips:
This recipe is versatile so if you feel that your dough is too firm add a little bit more hair conditioner and it will really soften up. If you feel that it’s melting in your hands a bit like slime and this is not what you intended then add a little more cornflour. Play around and see what your preferences are for your chosen activity. The amount of cornflour you need will also depend on what conditioner you buy as texture tends to vary so much. Add the cornflour in small batches until you are happy. It should be a soft, buttery moldable dough that doesn’t stick to the surface when you roll it out. But any mixture of these ingredients will be pure fun and your children will love it!
Butter Slime
This one is the A Team’s favourite! If you have a slime obsessed child but you have had difficulty making it at home then try out this incredibly easy recipe to make a consistency that’s somewhere in between dough and slime. It is very stretchy, gooey and extremely fun to manipulate!
Sprinkle some glitter or sequins on the top and let your kids fold them in, give them little toys to hide in the slime and then dig out, see how far it can stretch before it breaks and if you have any play ice cream cones or tubes that resemble cones they can fill them with this butter slime as pretend ice cream and put sequins on top for “sprinkles”.
You will need:
- 1/2 cup hair conditioner
- 1.5 cups of cornflour
- Optional food colour, glitter or sequins
Instructions:
- Add the hair conditioner to a large mixing bowl first
- Add in the cornflour in slow increments until you are happy with the consistency
- Fold in the glitter or sequins as you stretch and knead
Top Tips:
Again, this recipe is very flexible so just put the ingredients in a bowl and start playing! You will be able to see if you need more conditioner or if you would like to add more cornflour. I give the conditioner to my boys, who are 7 and 10 years old, when they are playing (not my 2 year old who I supervise closely!) because they like to add little by little until it’s very stretchy and gooey (and messy!).
Crumbly dough for snow, sand or dirt play:
This version of fairy dough does the opposite of butter slime. The idea is to add enough cornflour for the dough to become crumbly but still moldable once pressed together, similar in ways to cloud dough. I have often made dough like this as a stand in for play snow in wintery small worlds or as play dirt in find the insect play trays. You won’t need a specific recipe for this version but if you make classic fairy dough and add cornflour in small increments you will start to get a much firmer, moldable and crumbly texture to your dough. It’s a lot of fun to put into small worlds and when mixed with water it turns into gooey, slimy oobleck!
If you are not familiar with oobleck, it’s basically a cornflour and water messy mix that kids love to play with. If you press and roll the mixture together it can be turned into a ball and the moment you stop playing it melts back into a gooey mess.
We usually start off by making one batch of classic dough – the boys happily play with it for a long while before requesting to turn it into butter slime. They then play with the slime for an even longer time. When they are finished we either pack it away and let it dry naturally or I add more cornflour, dry it out a little bit and set up a small world for them to play with another day. In the smallworld I usually include some water so they can mix the two together again for messy play. Once they finish with this activity we throw it away and make a fresh batch when they feel like playing again.
Storage:
Because fairy dough doesn’t include salt it won’t keep as well as play dough. I recommend playing with it as I have mentioned above as that gets a lot of use out of the ingredients and after one week it may not be as fun to play with anymore. Store it in a ziplock bag at room temperature in a dry environment for best results.
This activity is very inexpensive to recreate – you can purchase conditioner for 1 pound or under and cornflour should be a similar price as well. Tools and play can be adapted to whatever suits you – be creative and have fun!
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