Do your kids get a little obsessed at times? Mine do.
For a while my smallest child was obsessed with anything and everything to do with space, so I made him a fun space play dough activity.
I don’t know much about space, but I know about play dough!
For our space play dough we used:
- marbles
- metallic pipe cleaners
- sequins
- pieces of foil
- printable accessories from our space play dough mats and accessories set
Now what we needed was some play dough, and I wanted something soft, stretchy, black and sparkly!
Soft Stretchy Space Play Dough
The first two recipes I tried were super soft and stretchy, but they didn’t hold the colour. So I tweaked and combined a few different recipes and came up with a soft and stretchy play dough that won’t turn your hands black!
How to Make Soft Stretchy Space Play Dough
This space play dough is soft stretchy and super sparkly!
Materials
- 1/2 cup plain flour
- 2 tbsp corn flour (cornstarch)
- 60 mls boiling water
- 2 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp hair conditioner
- black paint, or food dye
- lots of glitter
Tools
- 1 medium sized bowl
- 1 mixing spoon
Instructions
- Place the flour and corn flour (cornstarch) in a medium sized bowl and mix well.
- Make sure your water is boiling hot, then add the salt to the water and stir until it starts to dissolve.
- Add the oil, hair conditioner and lots of black colouring to the salty water and mix well.
- Add the water mixture into the flour and mix until it comes together to form a dough.
- You may need to add a little more flour if your dough is too sticky, but the more you mix and knead it the softer it will become.
- Flatten out the dough and add lots of glitter, knead the dough to
Notes
This makes enough play dough for 1 child. Store it in an air tight container or plastic wrap for up to 2 weeks.
Now we were ready to play!
There were lots of swirling nebulae and starry space scenes!
The strange, bumpy, marbles we found at Kmart were very popular.
Free Printable Star Playdough Accessories
If you’ve got a space mad kid who’d love a space play dough set up like this, I have some free printable star accessories to help get you started.
You can download the stars free printable here.
More Space Play Dough!
If you need even more space play dough goodies, then check out our brand new Space Play Dough Mats and Accessories.
There are six space themed play dough mats in this set, plus 2 pages of space accessories.
The space play dough set is in our shop and on sale for $3.99 for a limited time.
If your kids love play dough as much as mine try this sand play dough recipe and check out our ocean playdough activity here.
Thanks for sharing this recipe! We tried it this morning with mixed results…it took a lot of mixing, and much more flour to get a workable dough, but the main issue is that we can’t seem to get the dough as BLACK as you show in the photo. What paint or coloring did you use? We’ve tried washable tempera (got very sticky and never made it past grey), food coloring ( the food coloring is supposed to be black, but it looks more of a mossy green). We’ll try it again with any suggestions you share. Thanks again!
We used a concentrated gel food colouring, and it does take a fair bit to make it super black and you need to make sure whatever paint or dye you are using is a true black. Because flours differ the amount you’ll need can vary, so it might be worth starting with a little less water to see if that helps.