the gift of play dough

Homemade play dough has become our 

go-to gift for friends.

It's inexpensive and easy to make.

The recipient will have a ball 

while strengthening his or her fine motor skills.

(Sorry - once a Montessori teacher, always a Montessori teacher!)

Ultimately, it can be composted or thrown away, the container recycled.

Plus, nothing beats giving a gift that 

you made with your very own hands, right?!!

(Just ask Elise - she was nearly bursting with pride 

watching her friend unwrap the snowman on the left 

- she made the one on the right for herself, of course!)

To make the snowman play dough,

we followed the Imagination Tree's 4 Minute Play Dough Recipe,

and kneaded in some silver glitter and a splash of peppermint extract at the end.

In addition to the sparkly dough, we put together a few snowman supplies:

buttons,

googly eyes,

twig arms,

felt scarves,

and carrot noses (cut golf tees and toothpicks).

Of course, we had to put the snowman play dough in snowman jars

- thank you Eltern vom Mars!

In the photo at the top of the post, the jars are wearing knitted hats,

but if you're not a knitter - or you just don't want to spend your precious time knitting hats for jars -

try cutting off the toe of a single sock and gluing a pom pom to the top.

(The sock hat pictured above came off an extremely cute, child-made sock snowman 

we purchased at a craft fair this weekend.)

Happy gifting!