Cloud Dough Frog Pond

Over the years, E has definitely become more picky about the sensory activities she enjoys. She needs to wipe her hands a lot more, and wet sensory materials that stick to her hands and don’t form a dough aren’t nearly as enjoyable for her as they used to be. 

It’s not that she has a problem with getting messy, though – she definitely still likes that part 🙂

One sensory material that always seems to work for her is cloud dough. It’s messy but it’s pretty much dry, it will hold its shape when pressed, you can form it into balls and crumble them – and it only takes two basic ingredients {not counting the optional color}.

Even Baby N likes it!

Recently, I made a simple Cloud Dough Frog Pond for E that she thoroughly enjoyed.

(E was 4 years and 5 months old.)

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Materials for Cloud Dough Frog Pond:

• Flour.
• Vegetable oil. {Other types of oil work, too. Baby oil is a popular choice but make sure there’s no chance of the cloud dough being ingested if you use it.}
• Blue powder tempera.
• Frogs and lily pad from the Frogs and Turtles Toob. {Or other plastic frogs.}
• Green card stock.
• Scissors.
• Blue glass gems.
• Sensory bin.

 

Preparations for Cloud Dough Frog Pond:

I made half a batch of my usual recipe for colored cloud dough and added two heaping tablespoons of blue powder tempera.

I put the finished cloud dough into one of our smaller sensory bins and arranged the frogs, the lily pad from the toob and the blue glass gems on top. As an afterthought, I decided to cut a few extra lily pads from green card stock to give the frogs a few more spots to sit. I simply cut ovals freehand with scissors, then cut a small triangle from one of the shorter sides on each of the ovals.

E couldn’t stay out of the picture, she was too excited 😉

 

Playing with the Cloud Dough Frog Pond

She started out checking out the frogs and making them hop across the pond,

and discovered that the plastic lily pad made fun imprints in the cloud dough.

As usual when we play with toob animals, E asked about the names the frogs had engraved on their bellies. We didn’t know a lot about different types of frogs starting out, so this was a great starting point for finding out more later on.

After a while, she decided to try her hand at making cloud dough balls – and discovered that it wouldn’t work as long as she was holding anything but cloud dough in her hands.

Once she’d removed all the other items, she made a pretty good ball

and squished it almost immediately 😉

 

She asked me to make some balls for her and delighted in smashing them with her fist.

Suddenly, E jumped up and ran to get a plastic ice cream sundae cup and an ice cream scoop that she uses in the sandbox. She also used these items when we were playing with Sticky Sand – and as she was about to find out, the cloud dough behaved in a very similar way to the sticky sand.

Her first idea was scooping up cloud dough, frogs, gems and lily pads and putting them into the sundae cup.

She remembered the “cakes” she’d made from sticky sand and cleared an area of the sensory bin to make a cloud dough “cake”.

Due to the extra items, her cake crumbled immediately.

For the next one, she made sure to use cloud dough only – and it worked out beautifully!

She made several more cakes, experimenting with just how fast she needed to turn the sundae cup over to ensure that the cloud dough stuck together instead of falling out too soon.

As usual, the cloud dough stuck to her clothes but it came right out in the washing machine with no extra effort. The clean up of the area she’d played in was simple, too: She hadn’t spilled much and was able to quickly sweep it up with a broom and dustpan.

 

Have you played with cloud dough? Did your kids enjoy it? Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your story! 

Looking for more cloud dough ideas? Check out these!

Baby Play with Cloud Dough

Halloween Cloud Dough Sensory Bin

How to Make Cloud Dough

 

Don’t have powder tempera? Try these alternative ways of making cloud dough!

Colored Cloud Dough Recipe from Growing a Jeweled Rose uses candy colors.

Homemade Cloud Dough Recipe from Nurturestore uses chalk.