Amazing Playdo Recipe and Home Library Organizing...

I found this FABULOUS Playdo recipe and knew I just HAD to share it with you to make for your tykes-

Homemade Playdo Recipe

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1 Tbsp. cooking oil

1 Tbsp. cream of tartar

1 cup water

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl

2. In a small sauce pan, mix the dough on medium heat until it turns into a ball, about 2-3 minutes. Some residue may stick to the sides of the pan, but it hardens and falls off.

3. Place the dough on a flat surface and knead for a few minutes until smooth. It will be warm.

-- To color: take amount of dough you wish to color, drop a few drops of food coloring on it and knead it with your hand until a solid color forms. I used plastic gloves to prevent my hands from getting full of food coloring. Also, as you knead it with the food coloring, it starts off with a marble effect, but keep kneading until it is solid. You can use any colors, mix colors, etc.

-- To make a scent: add a few drops of any nice essential oils, vanilla essence, cinnamon, any good smells and knead it well. You can add more if the smell isn't strong enough. I also added some glitter to ours, the kids loved it. There are lots of fun things to add to the dough, feel free to share any good ideas.

Store it in a Ziploc or Tupperware with a lid.

Here is a cute project we did, using the playdo:

note: after this project, the kids got busy rolling, shaping, braiding etc until all the colors were mixed and we had a nice big grey blob:) Its a good thing we can make more Playdo should we need new colors!

Okay, so back to the project-

While my husband is more of the scholar and Rabbi, and I am the dreamer and creative one, my oldest has shown an amazing interest in all things SCIENCE. So its a REALLY good thing we have the Internet and a bunch of great resources so any time the little guy wants to learn something new and has questions that we do not know the answers to (like, what layer of the earth is lava found--- yes, he is 5 and asked this question!) we can just google it...

So in answer to his question, using Playdo, we built a little 3D model of the earth and what the layers somewhat look like:

I know I learnt it in high school once upon a time, but Science was REALLY not my thing. I really like the kids to have a hands on experience in whatever they are learning, so this was really great.

And by the way, lava is found in the Mantle. That's the 2nd layer from the top:)

***

Now I must tell you, I am not an organized person by nature. Because my kids are home for a large part of the day, I really try to have as many organized systems as possible, just to prevent utter chaos from happening.

We are a book family. The walls of our home are lined with books- including the kids playroom. We have all types of books: Jewish books, Story books, Dr. Seuss, Baby Board Books, Educational Books and some Hebrew Books. (I'm not a fan of Disney stories, Fairy tales or Nursery Rhymes, so they can discover those on their own one day, just not in our house)

Our kids (like most kids) LOVE reading. Even my little ones, just sitting on the floor with a book on their laps, love flipping the pages to see what comes up next.

Now the problem was, at the end of everyday, we had books ALL over the floor. And when it was time to clean up, the kids would just stuff them into the nearest space on the book shelf, upside down, side ways, whatever. It was getting ridiculous, especially when they were looking for a specific book, it took forever to find.

THEN...

I came upon a post of another homeschool mom and found her amazing idea that I tweaked for our family.

Using colored dots, we color coded the books into the different subjects I listed above. This took about 2-3 days to do, and not all at once.

Each subject has a different colored dot stuck on the bottom of the book. Now when they are done with a book, they put it in the correct section, facing the correct way, how awesome is that???

So if this is helpful to any of you- enjoy!