Moon Dough, (plus rice and lentils)

OK, so one of the ideas we wanted to try was Moon Dough, as lifted from Imagination Tree. This kind of play dough is not something you can roll into a ball. The way I would describe it, as others have, is like working with very very soft and feathery wet sand. All you do is add oil ( I used baby oil) to flour. The ratio in the recipe I saw was seven cups of flour to one of oil, but for experimental purposes, I added more oil. (we all ended up smelling like delicious newborn babies, and had soft and supple hands after our playtime.)To add interest and texture, I threw in some dry lentils and rice.
I expected my girls to be entertained for 20 minutes. That's about what I get with Play dough from Target. They played for and hour and ten minutes, and were so absorbed in their play that I was actually able to not only do the dishes, but also prepare dinner in advance for the evening. I also called my neighbor Michelle to come over. I was really impressed with myself, as she could vouch.

Anyway, I was really shocked with how long they played. My group is fast and furious but moves on from toys relatively quickly. What toy, by the way, keeps a toddler busy for this long?

There was a considerable mess when all was said and done, but bc the moon dough kind of clumps together, it was very easy to sweep together and up. If the babies hadn't needed entire outfit changes from the flour, cleanup would have been much faster than it ended up. (Cupcake started out sans outfit, and doesn't appear in the photos. She, apparently, had thought this through before mom.)

I totally recommend this! Just make sure youre over a hard floor, not over carpet.

Tools and instruments made it extra cool.

I put the Moon Dough into a casserole dish and let it sit for a few days. I had read that it never dries out. After three days, uncovered, it hadn't. Guess its that oil base.  One thing that I couldn't have predicted was that after those few days on the counter, my almost six year old found it and was just as entranced. I don't know why I had naturally counted him out. I guess we had done it while he was at school, and I thought it would be too simple an activity to appeal to him. Wrong-O.