Red, White, & Blue Playdough

One thing I'm striving for this summer is to try and not sweat the small stuff and to keep things simple when possible. So when I realized that somehow the 4th of July Weekend has already snuck up on us I decided to keep our festive play simple and go with some playdough play.

We have a great basic cooked playdough recipe which can be tweaked in lots of different ways to create slightly different versions or play invitations.




For this playdough invitation I used the basic playdough recipe exactly as it's posted, and did not add any color. I wanted the playdough to be the "white" in our "red, white, and blue" color scheme. After the playdough had cooked and formed a ball I placed it onto the counter for kneading. This is the perfect time to add glitter to any playdough recipe, so while I kneaded the dough Little Brother helped me by adding red and blue glitter into the dough. Overall we probably added about 2 teaspoons of each red and blue glitter. Once the glitter was fully blended into the playdough it was ready for play.

I had thought about just putting out the playdough, but then decided it would be fun to add in a star shaped cookie cutter and some blue gems. 

At first Little Brother just played with the soft, fresh playdough. But then he started using the cookie cutters and gems to create all sorts of things: patterns, pancakes, animal homes, treasure hunts. 

Little Brother happily played with the playdough for quite a while - even the kids seem to need some of these simple, basic play activities this summer. 

We're definitely planning on celebrating the 4th of July with some of our other favorite family activities: parades, friends & family, bbq, and fireworks! But for now this was a great, easy preview to the color fun coming up this weekend. 

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