Chicago is gearing up for Fall! Fall colors, fall flavors and all of the fun that the season brings with it!
If you have been following along for a while, you may have realized we love kitchen creativity and sensory play in our family, so it only seems natural that we adapt on of our favorite "recipes" for one of our favorite seasons!
The recipe and steps are simple enough for the kids to help prepare the ingredients while a grown-up, or older child, can help when it comes time to simmer it on the stovetop. Our daughter has always enjoyed measuring and mixing the ingredients right into the saucepan for me before we put it over the heat and its a great way to safely bring younger children into the activity.
You should end up with enough dough (about four tennis ball sized pieces) for multiple children to play with one batch, or enough to share if you wanted to gift some to a friend! This can become a sweet homemade gift - place dough and a couple of fall themed cookie cutters into an airtight clear jar, attach a note to the lid and "viola!" - instant gift and activity to delight all of your senses!
If you want to amplify the "pumpkin" theme, you can add red and yellow food dye to the mixture, while stirring it over the heat, and create a beautiful orange color, or if you live it natural the spices will leave you with a nice shade of brown. You may notice that in some of our photos we have created a fall-inspired red, green and orange collection of dough. We did this AFTER cooking - which is possible, but definitely messier! I took three balls of dough, pressed my thumb into the top to make an indentation, and added food coloring and then kneaded each ball to distribute the color evenly. May takeaway advice is to WEAR GLOVES if you choose to do this if you do not want red, green and orange hands.
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*Please remind your children that this dough is not edible! The spices work together to make it smell so amazing like a pumpkin pie, but it is not for consumption.
