6 Ingredient Homemade Play-Doh

Have you ever made homemade play-doh?

I grew up with a mom who made homemade play-doh so I had to continue the tradition with my own kids.  This recipe is so easy and you can easily add the ingredients to your next grocery pick up order.  The recipe is fast to make and the play-doh lasts for 1-2 weeks if you keep it in a ziploc bag.  

I've made play-doh for my kids, when we had friends over to play and for a whole class.  It's a really inexpensive, fun activity to do with kids and they love when you let them pick their own color of play-doh.  When Olive was in Pre-K, I made a class set of play-doh for her Christmas party and Olive requested we make more this Fall.  

Homemade Play-Doh Recipe:

1 cup flour

1 cup warm water

1/2 cup salt

1 T lemon juice

1 t vegetable oil

liquid food coloring

Directions:

Add everything to a saucepan and stir until well combined.  Add food coloring, vegetable oil, lemon juice and water back to back to get the best colored play-doh.  If you wait until it's well combined to add the food coloring, the color won't mix in well.  Stir the mixture with a spatula as it thickens up. If you have older kids, you can ask them to help you stir.  Keep stirring until it gets to a good play-doh consistency.  Then put in on the counter or a plate and knead it.  It's warm so I usually knead it the first minute or two and then pass it on to the kids.

You'll be the favorite mom in the neighborhood when you set up a play-doh factory in your kitchen!  The kids loved using my utensils to chop and create.

Big kids will love it!

Toddlers will love it!

We experimented with mix ins.  Cinnamon was fun to sprinkle in but didn't add much of a smell.  These sprinkles were great to mix in once the play-doh cooled.

We learned about coloring mixing.

We made birthday cakes.

And Grimace shakes!

And the 5th graders really enjoyed shopping Olive's play-doh shop at school!  We made pumpkin play-doh. and put it in bags to sell at her class market.

We also made look alike Crumbl Cookie play-doh to sell.  This was a big hit!

I hope you have someone in your life to make play-doh for!  It's been so fun for us to make the past month or so.  I'm going to make sure that I always have these ingredients on hand now that the weather is turning color and we might have some snow days in our future.  Let me know if you have any questions!

Best Chapter Books for Kids in 2023

Happy March!  Let's kick off a new month with new books!

I love reading chapter books with my big kids.  And several of you have messaged me asking for book recommendations!  These posts take a long time to put together so I'm excited to finally share my list of current favorite chapter books with you.  

I've gotten into a good routine of reading to them at bedtime.  Olive sometimes reads to Fletcher after I head downstairs and we also read picture books during the day.  Today I'm going to share our very favorite chapter books!  These are books that the kids have really enjoyed.  I'll try to give you a few details about why we love them and then I'll put my Amazon link with the description.

This stack of books makes me smile!  It's my favorite record of all the books we've read recently.  It makes me proud to see on hard parenting days and I hope these books will be books that the kids look back and remember fondly.

 1 // The Wild Robot & The Wild Robot Escapes

This set of books is so interesting!  Roz, the wild robot, is endearing, interesting and always learning.  She's very smart and she works so hard to make new friends.  She's creative and we were all invested in her wild life.  We read these months ago and still talk about them regularly.  There are sweet illustrations that help you love the characters even more throughout the books.  Book #3 comes out in September - we can't wait!!

 

2 // Dog Man Series

We are new to Dog Man by Dav Pilkey.  It's the same author/illustrator as Captain Underpants, but we like this graphic novel series better.  They're silly, are filled with sight words for early readers and both my 1st grader and 4th grader enjoy them.  My new reader feels confident reading pages aloud because of all of the familiar sight words.  These are more fun to read together when you're sitting side by side.  You won't want to miss these cute illustrations.  Everything is very child like - crossed out words and doodles for art.  There are even drawing lessons in the book of book 1 so that you can write your own Dog Man story.  There are at least 11 books in the Dog Man series.

 

3 // Cat Kid

These go along with the Dog Man graphic novels, but have more of a cat focus.  My kids love them for all the same reasons that they love Dog Man.  The illustrations and text are really approachable and interesting.

 

4 // Frindle

This is a classic novel that I always loved reading to my 3rd graders.  Nick Allen might be labeled a troublemaker by some, but really he's creative and interested in doing new things.  He's a friendly guy full of creative ideas that he likes to try out on his teachers and classmates.  Why do you have to call a pen a pen?  This was a fun one to read and discuss.

 

5 //  Hotel Flamingo

We loved this animal packed series.  Anna inherits Hotel Flamingo and is set on revitalizing it as a booming hotel on Animal Boulevard.  The hotel workers and guests are the most interesting animals.  We really enjoyed learning facts about the different animals and loved seeing what jobs they did around the hotel.  Anna is a very hard worker and loves to handle any animal challenge or adventure that comes her way.  The illustrations are darling and the whole series is so cute.  We loved the whole set!

 

6 // The Zebra Wall

This is another classic that I always read with my students.  The Vorlob family is so interesting.  They do everything their own way.  They have unique family traditions and seem to make a splash wherever they go.  Their oldest child has lots of big feelings about adding a new baby to the family.  The family dynamics are so interesting.  This story gave us lots to talk about - everything from home decor, to embarrassing situations, to things we're scared of and naming a baby.  The Vorlobs are the most interesting family around as illustrated by their family car - a retired school bus!

 

7 // Kitty and the Moonlight Rescue

We loved reading about Kitty's adventures rescuing a cat in need.  She was brave and bold and the neighborhood knew they could count on her.  The illustrations are precious and very detailed.  It would be a fun book to read side by side so you don't miss any of those details.  This book feels geared to a 1st/2nd grade audience, but my 4th grader didn't complain about listening to it.  There is a whole series if your kids enjoy book #1.

 

 

8 // Clementine

For those of you whole like silly kids, Clementine is your girl.  She's got the best of intentions, but her plans often go wrong.  She has an incident with hair cutting, marker messes and little brother troubles.  Her mom is an artist.  Her dad is the building maintenance man and there is never a dull moment with Clementine.  These are much better than Junie B Jones and leave room for lots of discussions about how Clementine could handle things differently or how she was misunderstood.  Both kids love Clementine.

 

 

9 // Who Was... Series

4th grade Olive loves these biographical stories.  She's probably read about every female she can get her hands on.  She says they are interesting and she loves to read them independently.  She is always talking about them and things she's learned from them.

 

10 // Who Would Win...

1st Grade Fletcher loves to read this series.  He's still an early reader and can use the pictures + the text to read these on his own.

 

 

I hope this gives you some new book options to read with your kids!!  Let me know if you have any questions or any tricky readers are your house.  I'd love to help connect you with good books!

Couscous Stir Fry

Have you ever made couscous?

Ever tried it?

I think the first time I ever ate it was in a swanky Brazillian steak house in Salt Lake.  It was a cold couscous salad and it was dreamy.  I have been on a couscous kick for a few weeks after finding a container of my favorite couscous pearls at my grocery store.  It's called Rice Select Pearl Couscous (Toasted Israeli Style Pasta).  It's the perfect side dish or addition to a meal to beef it up a bit.  My whole family loves it.  The kids call it Goose-Goose :)

Now on to this Couscous Stir Fry.

A few years ago I started trying very very hard to not waste food.  That meant repurposing leftovers, eating leftovers instead of making something new, keeping a very close eye on my produce and freezing lots of food before it went bad.  All of that is going great and I have gotten to the point where I can confidently say that we waste very little food.

I had a bowl of leftover couscous waiting for me in the fridge.

I served it as a side the night before with rotisserie chicken (recipe here) and was now trying to reinvent my leftovers.  I knew I had all the fixings for stir fry.

Here's my recipe - no measuring; just dump in as much as you'd like.

matchstix carrots

green onion

yellow onion

sweet peppers

frozen peas or snap peas or both :)

clove of garlic

rotisserie chicken 

olive oil

soy sauce

teriyaki sauce

cooked couscous

 

Cook all the veggies first with olive oil.  Add in chicken, sauces and add in the couscous last.  Heat everything and stir until everything is coated in sauce.  Enjoy!  I made too much the first time and am happy to report that it reheats very well as leftovers.

Here's the container of pearl couscous to look for in the store.  I found mine at Walmart.  It say there are 12 servings in this container.  I like the pearl couscous better than the regular couscous.  It's easier to eat since the pearls are bigger.  Regular couscous is messy.

I can't wait to make this again!

Day Trip to Vincennes

What are all the fun destinations 1 hour, 2 hours or 3 hours away from your house?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and hoping to to on some fun adventures with my kids this year.  Summer isn't that far away and I want to make the most of it.

I made my plans my parents to meet up half way between their house and mine yesterday.  One hour drive for each of us to bring us a few leftover things from Leo's birthday party weekend.  This is a city we rarely spend any time in.  It's a pass through city for us on our trips to visit family.  I started checking around and found an Indiana Military Museum in Vincennes, Indiana.  It would be open while we were in town and I knew Fletcher would go nuts to see a whole military museum.  I invited my parents and we all agreed to go after we grabbed some breakfast.

You can read all about the Indiana Military Museum here: http://indymilitary.com/

If you're local, it's a really neat stop.  We already have plans to go back.  It's amazing and wild to see the changes in military uniforms, gear, supplies, support from home and memorabilia they've collected.  A volunteer told us that many of the things they have on display are donated from families of veterans.  The museum is also set up in Chronological order as you walk through the display cases.  It was really interesting.

We started outside because we had never seen so many planes, tanks, helicopters, weapons and military equipment in one location.  We let Fletcher lead the way.  He was really interested in checking everything out and looking to see where the doors were on each vehicle and making sure they were locked.  There are three sections to tour - the outside lawn and two giant indoor museum buildings.

Fletcher was so interested in the vehicles - where they stored their weapons - the compasses, the knives in the cases, the bikes, the way the camo changed from war to war.  It was fun to see him get so excited about something.

The Annex was open on the day we visited.  The trenches were fascinating.  It's hard to imagine living, fighting and working in trenches like these.  The entire Annex is set up in scenes with mannequins.  It was so interesting.

One last tour around the giant submarines and equipment.

We also stopped for a quick visit to the George Rogers Clark National Historic Park along the Wabash River.  It's about 5 minutes away from the Indiana Military Museum and definitely worth seeing.  The grounds are gorgeous - perfect for a picnic and there is lots to learn.  We hope to go back and get to tour inside the Clark Memorial so we can learn more about it.

You can read more about it here: https://www.nps.gov/gero/index.htm

 

We all enjoyed our day exploring Vincennes!

What's a road trip that is on your radar near your home?

I've got several state parks, splash parks, zoo, friends and family on my radar!

Fun @ Home

We're almost 40 days into our shelter in place and most days we can easily say we are having fun.  Sure, we are missing our regular routines, but, we are making the most of our time together.

We are keeping basic routines of getting ready every day, keeping the house tidy, learning, having fun and enjoying the sunshine any chance we can get.

I started doing something where I ask the kids each morning -  

What is ONE thing you want to do today?

Then they list one activity that they hope to get to do.  It'll be something like play outside, Play-Doh, an art project, Facetime with _________, bake cookies, etc.  I write their one thing on my daily to do list.  *If their one thing happens to be something that is not possible, we will talk through why it isn't an option for that day (ex: swimming wouldn't work today because it's only 50 degrees outside) and then they'll pick something different to do.  It's been a simple way for me to take into account their hopes for the day as I'm working through my own to do list.  I love asking for their input and letting them help me plan the day.

I'm excited to share some of our favorite FUN things to do at home from this month.

1. Fly a Kite

2. Build a blanket/pillow fort
This is perfect for a rainy day.  My kids love to build Blanket City.  Each blanket is a different type of city.  Our only rule this is that the kids have to help clean up if they want to build a fort.  Also, if they start fighting or arguing the fort gets put away.  They both really enjoy making forts so we rarely have any problems with this.

3. Zoom Meetings or Facetime
Say YES to any zoom meetings or try to Facetime with family and friends.  Olive has a weekly Zoom meeting with her class.  This was her face during their first Zoom call.  She was SO excited to connect with her friends and teacher again.

4. Climb / Play / Explore
Playing outside is probably their #1 favorite activity.

5. Use Your Imagination
I think this game had something to do with firefighters fighting fires.  It was chilly out so no actual water was shot out of these water guns.   I love seeing the games the kids come up with now that they've got much more than usual time at home together.

6. Sidewalk Chalk a Garden
My kids like a theme when we sidewalk chalk.  Some of our favorite themes - flowers, trace outlines of each other, giant pizza slices, rainbows, name art, hopscotch boards, etc.

7. Plan a Picnic (inside or outside!)
I packed the kid's Yumboxes with their favorite foods, let them stay in their pjs through lunch time and then invited them to an indoor picnic.  They loved it.

8. Movie Night
Olive completed another reading log so we celebrated with a movie night & popcorn.  We watched Richie Rich.  We all enjoyed it!  Find fun ways to celebrate your kid's learning milestones at home.  This celebration only required Netflix and a bag of microwave popcorn.  Super easy and Olive felt super special to stay up a little later than normal to watch a movie.

9. Bake
I've baked with the kids, tried new recipes and tried to enjoy having more time at home to cook.  I made cinnamon rolls for Kevin this week and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies before that.

10. Family Walks
We've taken a little break from bike riding as I'm recovering, but walks are still totally doable.  We try to squeeze in a walk any day that the weather is nice.  It's good for all of us to get out and stretch our legs.

What fun things are you doing with your family during this time??