Ice Cream Dough Sensory Play

 

Ice Cream Dough – what an awesome name, who wouldn’t like to try some?! 😉 The original recipe using conditioner comes from Play Create Explore.

I’m not generally the best at homemade play doughs but this one is really really simple – there’s no cooking, no hot water, just two simple ingredients that you probably have in the house right now: Cornstarch and your choice of either conditioner, shampoo or body wash. {Here’s a post about how I tried the different options.}

It’s just important to know that once you get to the “OMG, this is wayyyyy too sticky, I must’ve done something wrong!!!” stage, you have it nailed! After that, it’s just one more minute or so of kneading, and it’s ready for play.

And it really does its name justice – treated right, it looks JUST like ice cream. But even if you’re, say, a toddler, and just do whatever you want with it, it’s really fun and a quite different sensory experience than regular play dough.

 

(E was 2 years and 5 months old.)

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

 

Materials for Ice Cream Dough Sensory Play:

• Conditioner or shampoo or body wash. {You can even mix two or all three if you don’t have enough of one.}
• Cornstarch.
• Assorted accessories. We had party picks, bowls, kitchen utensils, straws, plastic ice cream cones, and some left-over purple rice as “sprinkles”.

 

 

 

I never measure, I just put cornstarch into a bowl, add the conditioner/shampoo/body wash and start mixing with my hands. Then I usually have to add more of the wet ingredient because I always underestimate how much I need 😉

Like mentioned above, there always comes a point where I’m SURE that this can’t be right because the mixture turns very very sticky. That actually means that you have the correct proportions. Keep kneading, and you’ll have your smooth, slightly stretchy ice cream dough ready for play soon.

We had all three variations of ice cream dough – using conditioner, shampoo and body wash. It didn’t really make a difference for its consistency. I added some cocoa powder to one batch and left the other as it was.

 

 

E was a little skeptical at first and stuck a straw into one of the bowls with ice cream dough.

 

 

She noticed that some of the dough went into the end of the straw, and she spent some time trying to get it out again.

 

 

She used the fork to mash the dough for a bit

 

 

then suddenly dumped out the party picks.

 

 

She didn’t actually want to use the picks, she just wanted to fill the container with ice cream dough.

 

 

When it was filled to the brim, she tried to get the dough out again. It wasn’t easy 😉

 

 

 

In the meantime, I played around with the ice cream dough a little myself, and was amazed at how much it really looked like ice cream!

 

 

E had me roll little dough balls for her, then squished them and layered them on top of a bowl full of dough.

 

 

 

The longer E played, the more the ice cream dough crumbled. You could always refresh it with a tad more conditioner/shampoo/body wash – but it was still a lot of fun that way.

 

 

 

 

Have you tried ice cream dough sensory play? What’s your favorite homemade play dough? Leave a comment below and tell me all about it!

If you like this post, click here to subscribe to my newsletter and receive an email once a week when new posts are published, or to my RSS feed.

Also make sure to follow me on Pinterest to stay up to date with all we do, and for lots of great ideas from others!

If you prefer Facebook, I’d love to connect with you there: Like and drop me a line on my Facebook page, where I share my own posts and those of others every day!