Kathrynne woke up with a fever today. So much of my day was spent caring for her — and much of the other normal stuff just got shelved. By late afternoon, she was finally feeling a little better, so Kaitlynn and Silas and I let her rest while we stole away to the kitchen to make peanut butter playdough.
Kaitlynn and Silas had a lot of fun helping me mix up the playdough and then I gave them each a ball of dough and a few toppings on a plate plus a cookie sheet and let them just have at it. They had a lot of fun making their own creations and pictures with the playdough on the cookie sheet.
And then they had even more fun bringing it to show Kathrynne and then all eating their creations together.
The whole project was simple, very inexpensive (we just used ingredients we already had on hand!), and easy to clean up. After the Flubber mess, the fact that I didn’t have to spend quite a bit of time scrubbing goo off the walls and the kitchen table after we were finished was a bit of a welcome relief. 🙂
Peanut Butter Playdough Recipe
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1/2 to 1 cup powdered milk
- Toppings to decorate playdough: chocolate chips, jelly beans, M&M’s, sunflower seeds, raisins, chopped fruit, shredded coconut, etc.
Mix first three ingredients together until nice dough is formed (add more powdered milk if the dough is too sticky). Let children form into shapes and decorate.
If you don’t have powdered milk, here are two other recipes I found:
Peanut Butter Playdough #2: 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of peanut butter, + 1 tablespoon of honey
Peanut Butter Playdough #3: 4 cups of peanut butter, 1 cup of light corn syrup, + 2 cups of powdered sugar
Did you do something fun and frugal as a family today? If you blogged about it, I’d love for you to leave a link to your blog post below. Or, you can just tell us what you did in the comments.
Note: There seems to be some confusion as to what to link up with this series. Since the purpose of this series is to encourage you to be intentional about fun in your home this summer, please only link up posts showing pictures/sharing details of fun things you did as a family today (or within the last few days). Posts that do not adhere to these guidelines will be deleted in order to make it fair for those who are putting forth a lot of effort to participate in this challenge.
My 2.5 year old daughter and I had fun making Father’s Day cards. I used to be a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator, so I have tons of supplies just sitting around waiting to be used. Our special cards where FREE!
My daughters and I went to the $1 movies today and saw “Dolphin Tale”. Very cute movie and since it was shot locally (Pinellas County, FL) we had fun looking for familiar locations. We all enjoyed it even though my girls are 16, 15 and 13! Tomorrow we’re headed to a local pool with a friend.
My MIL makes this often to play with my kids and their cousins. They all love it, and it’s fairly healthy too (at least the way she makes it – didn’t look closely at your recipe.)!
This is a fun series. Thanks for sharing.
This is a great recipe and so easy. Will definitely visit this again on a rainy day!
This looks much cooler than the back yard camp out I was planning this weekend. Maybe we’ll do this instead.
Last year I made sand playdough when we were at the beach and all the kids loved it.
What is sand playdough????
I think this is the recipe we used. It was fun!
http://www.simplymodernmom.com/2011/06/sand-play-dough-recipe/
I made a list this weekend of everything my son and can do together. I’m really looking forward to our summer list!
http://simplymykitchen.com/50-things-to-do-this-summer/
The boys in my home along with my husband has resurrected a card game called Pokemon. We have cards from years ago and they are having a blast teaching my(our) 8 yo how to play.
Also my 8 yo son and I have started walking together every night. We have a sidewalk that goes around our “big” block that is just about a mile long circle. My goal is by the end of the summer to be able to jog/run around it 3 times. We are starting with once around the block for a week, then moving it to twice for 2 weeks then 3 times. This has been a really fun way to have more one on one time with him.
Love the idea of the cookie sheets – that would work great for containing any similar project!
This is the same recipe I’ve been using with Andrew for the last couple of years. He absolutely loves peanut butter and getting to play with it is even better. 🙂
Oh, I linked mine but put my name instead of the name of the family fun we did. Oh, I am not good with this computer gunk. http://seekingtruthdaily.blogspot.com/2012/06/alphabet-words-around-town-scavenger.html
It is called “Alphabet & Words Around Town Scavenger Hunt”
The Enjoy Life chocolate chips you used are the only brand that my son can eat.
Where do you purchase them? I have a very hard time finding them around here.
I saw at heavenlyhomemakers.com this weekend shared they were on sale at iHerb. Here is the link: http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/saving-money-online-healthy-deals-16
Durning the on summer months amazon usually has good deals on them.
I meant during the non summer months amazon has them. They don’t usually have them durning the summer because they melt durning shipping.
Thank you, Tabitha!
I got them from Vitacost — free with credit through their referral program. If you’re not promoting it on your blog, you definitely should! They have some great deals and their referral program is such a win-win program! https://moneysavingmom.com/2012/05/vitacost-free-shipping-on-25-orders-10-off-10-coupon.html
Thank you!!
This is the second time I’ve seen you use Santa Cruz Organic peanut butter and I was just wondering where you buy it and how much it is? We love peanut butter and I’m always searching for the best deal!
Thank 🙂
I got it from Vitacost — free with credit through their referral program.
Thanks Crystal! We just bought out last stock up on peanut butter from Vitacost as well. Arrowhead Mills Organic Valencia. It is very smooth, creamy, and light tasting. Sometimes I miss the more peanutty taste of the Smuckers Organic that we had been buying. Does the Santa Cruz have a strong roasted peanut flavor?
My first thought on reading this is “where’s the epi-pen?”. My son was recently diagnosed with a peanut allergy! But he just pent a few days with his aunt and she made him homemade indelible play dough. Guess I’ll need to borrow her recipe instead. But looks like your kids enjoyed it!
Can he have sunbutter or almond butter? If so, you should be able to substitute that.
Around where I live the cheapest I can find Sunbutter is $6 per container. My son is allergic to peanuts and almonds, and we avoid all nuts.
What a great idea for the peanut butter play-doh! Thanks for sharing:) I’ve been thinking of making regular play-doh for awhile now.
I loved this as a kid! With older kids, it’s fun to use the playdough (or cookie dough) as a geography lesson. Have them make a shape of the state (or the neighborhood/house for younger ones) and add choc chips for mountains, blue m&ms for lakes, etc.
That’s the recipe my family has used for years to make health peanut butter balls! never thought of using it for play dough.
I like the idea of using the recipe to make edible peanut butter balls. I make energy bites every week (Crystal posted the recipe before). But I’ll have to try these out.
They are very good, especially when dipped in chocolate! (but that is a little less healthy)
Today I gave my 5 year old boy a stack of 4 or 5 flyers and a pencil. I set him up at the kitchen table and let him circle all the things he thought he would need to buy for his family when he is a dad someday. It was funny to have him show me later all the things he’d chosen. In addition to yogurt, pineapple and cereal, he also chose a power washer and a tv set! LOL! This kept him busy for at least 45 minutes. He took it very seriously and was quite proud to show me all he’d chosen at the end … along with a few giggles about the funny things!
What a fun and creative idea!
Peanut butter is quite expensive in my parts of town. The smallest jar at the store is about the same as a pack of 4 playdough canisters.
Oh, and so is honey. Id probably opt for an inedible version.
The inedible versions are probably a LOT less expensive. I am hoping to try one of those as part of this series, too, as my children asked yesterday if we could please make colored playdough!
Yes! I think my inedible homemade play dough was something like $0.27 for 2 cups. 🙂 The inedible is a lot easier to use for making things, but the edible kind is more like a snack you can play with… 🙂
That was my second thought, how expensive peanut butter and honey are and that it would be much cheaper to make normal homemade playdough. My first thought was for my son, who is allergic to nuts. 😉 So we won’t be trying this although we have made neon inedible playdough and cut shapes with cookie cutters. 🙂
This activity I fell into by accident…but I think it points out one of the easiest solutions. Any time water comes into the picture my kids are happy for hours! http://www.elisephotini.com/watering-flowers-toddler/ 🙂
Since it was pouring down rain at our house today we needed to find an inside activity. My kids picked to do a science experiment today. We had some science kits we had not used yet so they picked one of these they had a great time.
I think the peanut butter playdough looks like something my kids would like too. I will have to look into a dairy free alternative.
We made homemade puffy paint today using an alternate recipe I found in Family Fun magazine, since I didn’t have self-rising flour. The kids has a lot of fun with it and my 16month old got to finger paint and loved it until she started to eat it! Not sure what we’ll do tomorrow.
The edible peanut butter playdough looks like a great idea! Great for a hot summer day when we’re stuck indoors. Thanks!
My boys love to make (and eat!) peanut butter play-dough. Our recipe is a bit different, if you’re interested in trying a simpler recipe.
http://discoverexplorelearn.com/2011/08/peanut-butter-play-dough/
Awesome alternative, since i never have powered milk. Now i just need little kids again, someday grandchildren…… 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing another alternate recipe!
When I saw the title, my gut thought was, “Peanut Butter Playdough – Can I come play at your house?” 🙂
😉