cloud dough | The Jam Jar Journals

Combine a small world and a messy play and I am in heaven! They make lovely presents or you could just leave out a pot for your children to find as a little surprise. They can then pop it into a tray when they find it and play! It invigorates your old toys and the little girls always create such beautiful stories when I do this. Sometimes they play alone while I am making dinner or we play together. Either way it usually provides at least half an hour of fun – a good store cupboard standby as it keeps in a sealed jar for months.

Simply fill a kilner jar with cloud dough – here’s the recipe. Half the recipe for a small kilner jar.

The jar above is for a little girl who has a guinea pig and I thought it would be fun for her to create a small world for a toy one. I just added a little Playmobil and glitter to the cloud dough.

My glass pens have run out so I had to use a Sharpie – it looks lovely but I think I prefer it written in coloured pens. I personalised it on the other side with her name which the children always love. The present below is for my goddaughter. She loves ice-cream and I have found her a little set of wooden lollys for pretend play.

I thought she might like to create her own ice-cream sundaes so I popped in a silicone cake case, pony beads, a few jewels and glitter so she can top off her creation (I was looking for our mini sundae dishes but the little girls have squirrelled them away so I had to improvise).

I have done this lots of times and it is always a hit. Try popping in little plastic animals to make a farm or a zoo. Tiny vegetables and flowers to make a garden. Pirates, glass ‘treasure’ beads and a cannon for a messy battle or dinosaurs so that they can excavate them (add a paint brush to dust down the dinosaurs professionally)! If you add cars though, be warned, you will never get the cloud dough out of the wheels so perhaps have a set particularly for cloud dough if the children are desperate to put them in.

Enid Blyton Rating: 10 out of 10 (This is always a massive hit and I love to hear the little girls give voices to their play as they move their characters around the dough world).

I am determined to get this blog started again! So here are a few posts on last years adventures.

We often make cloud dough now – a bit like moon sand but much cheaper! Simply take 8 cups of flour and mix with 1 cup of baby oil and you have instant stuff to mould and play with. I used lavender baby oil which resulted in a very chilled afternoon in the garden! We made houses for polar bears and sandcastles for cows?!? To extend the activity we made the cloud dough together, then added various cups, spoons, tubs then animals gradually. We do cloud dough inside too but it is best to have individual trays or the two little girls can go a bit crazy and we have a snow covered kitchen!