Making a Play Park with Play Dough

We love going to the play park and have already spent many sunny days playing on swings and slides and climbing over climbing frames this summer. So I wasn’t really surprised when our play dough became a play park one rainy afternoon. I was inspired by Puttisworld to try some construction with cocktail sticks and play dough. I was hoping to talk about squares and triangles, but imagination took hold and we ended up with a mini play park.

This is our recipe for play dough:
2 cups flour
½ cup salt
2 tbsp oil
1 ½ cup boiling water
Squeeze of lemon juice
Generous splash of red food colouring


I adapted this from one I found on The Imagination Tree where you can find many recipes and wonderful ideas for play dough play.


So, we started with this:

Pink Play Dough and Cocktail Sticks

And ended up with swings:

Play Dough Swings

A slide:

Play Dough Slide

Balancing bars:

Play Dough Balancing Bars

And an interesting climbing frame:

Play Dough Climbing Frame

Actually, I did most of the design work and B made interesting shapes with the dough (the climbing frame is all his) but we had a great conversation while working with the play dough and I hope I sparked his creativity for the possibilities of play dough.