Playing with plasticine, children develop not only the coordination of fingers and hands, but also their creative thinking. On the shelves of children's stores you can find such goods in a wide variety. But why spend money on synthetic toys, if you can understand how to make plasticine with your own hands? Soft and hypoallergenic, smart and edible - there are a lot of options, you just need to choose the right one for your child.
Homemade plasticine: what is it made of?
Since making plasticine with your own hands is not very difficult, more attention needs to be paid to the safety of the ingredients: children continually strive to taste everything. Flour, salt, soda, water and oil are the main ingredients that are not suspicious. And what about the dyes, because sculpting figures from a gray-white mass is not as interesting as from a multi-colored plasticine store? In this case, there are many options for the pigments used:
- The easiest way is to take juice from vegetables: from beets you get red, from carrots - orange, from spinach - green. You can mix them and get different shades.
- In the confectionery department of any store they sell special food colors that are used in baking: they are perfect for this occasion.
- Instant drinks in small bags produce very bright colors (raspberry, lime and so on), so they can also be taken for a wider variety of color palettes obtained plasticine.
- Gouache will color the pieces well, but you need to be careful with it: if you overdo it, the clay will get your hands dirty.
There are a few tricks to making homemade plasticine more unusual:
- Children will like plasticine with a smell, so add a couple of drops of aromatic oil to each piece. For example, to an orange slice - orange, to yellow - lemon: from them you can dazzle fruits that will smell like real ones. The main thing is not to overdo it with the dosage and make sure that the baby is not allergic to the selected aromas.
- Spangles will decorate the plasticine mass, you just need to mix them carefully so that they do not sprinkle when sculpting.
Homemade plasticine: how to store it?
Since making plasticine with your own hands is possible only from natural products, then there will be no preservatives in it, respectively, and it will have to be stored in a different way from a store:
- The first condition is to keep it in sealed packaging: containers, cans, sachets or cling film - at least something from this arsenal can be found in every home.
- The second is a cool place (a fridge is best).
The advantages of homemade plasticine
Compared with store plasticine, home has a number of undeniable advantages:
- Since plasticine can always be made from flour, and every housewife has the ingredients for its preparation, it will be much cheaper.
- There are no preservatives, synthetic materials and chemicals in it, so you will not worry much if the child licks it a little.
- Pieces with different colors are easy to mix in a different shade, which cannot be done with purchased plasticine: yellow and red never mix in orange.
Option 1. Soft clay
How to make plasticine from flour so that it turns out soft, but at the same time does not stick to hands?
With the help of the recipe presented, it will turn out just such a result: pleasant to the touch, colors mix when sculpted, the details stick perfectly to each other, but do not stick to hands. For manufacturing you will need:
- oil (sunflower or olive) - 1 tbsp. a spoon;
- dyes;
- citric acid - 1 tbsp. spoon of salt (preferably small) - 1 cup;
- water - 2 cups;
- flour - 2 cups.
How to make plasticine with your own hands?
- Pour water and vegetable oil into the pan. Put on the stove. After the bubbles appear, you must immediately turn off the fire.
- While the water boils, the remaining ingredients need to be mixed in a large cup.
- Pour the resulting liquid into a mixture of flour and salt and mix. It turns out that the flour is brewed, so that at first lumps will form. When the dough is not so hot, you need to start kneading it with your hands. The result should be a soft, non-sticky mass.
- Divide the dough into small sticks - these will be the alleged pieces of plasticine.
- We begin to paint plasticine in the chosen colors: to do this, make a small depression in each piece and drip the dye. Mix and for a brighter color, if necessary, add more. But you must always wear gloves so that you do not wash your hands off the paint.
Option 2. Cook in the microwave
In order to prepare a mass for modeling, you do not need to spend a lot of time, since You can make homemade clay in the microwave in just a couple of minutes.
From the list of ingredients:
- oil (any vegetable) - 1 tbsp. a spoon;
- flour - 2 glasses;
- dyes;
- salt - 1 cup;
- tartar (or baking powder) - 1 tbsp. a spoon.
Mix all the ingredients in a container that is suitable for the microwave, cover and put on warm. Turn on the medium baking mode for 4-5 minutes (depending on the time model, a little more may be required). Remove and, after cooling, make balls out of the mass.
Option 3. Hypoallergenic plasticine
Now many children may be allergic to flour because it contains gluten (gluten).
Therefore, it can be easily replaced with corn starch and follow the instructions on how to make clay without flour.
Composition:
- soda (food) - 2 glasses;
- dye;
- water - 1.5 cups;
- corn starch - 1 cup.
Preparation Scheme:
1. Mix in a saucepan all the ingredients and put on a small fire.
2. Plasticine will be ready when a ball begins to form from the mixture.
3. Next, you need to cool, make a small dent and add a little dye there.
4. Knead the dough for modeling.
Option 4. Handgum (or "smart" plasticine)
Handgam is not an ordinary plasticine: outwardly it looks more like a slimy mass, and people call it a lizun. Compared with ordinary plasticine, it has one indisputable advantage: it does not stick to hands and clothes. Children are very fond of playing with him, although they will not succeed in making any figures out of him. Handgam is quite expensive, and there is a not very useful element in the composition - sodium tetraborate.
Of course, it is unlikely to completely protect the child from all kinds of chemicals, but it is quite realistic to minimize contact with them. Therefore, we can further find out how make plasticine without sodium.
Materials:
- PVA glue - ¼ cup;
- package - 1 small;
- liquid starch - 1/3 cup;
- dye.
Operating procedure:
- Pour the starch into a bag.
- Add some dye.
- Pour in glue and shake. It should get a clot and a little fluid.
- Remove from the bag and drain.
Option 5. Delicious plasticine
How to make plasticine so that it turns out to be edible? Using this recipe, you can stick a mountain of tiny cakes with your child, and then play a real tea party and eat them. To do this, take the following ingredients:
- honey - 6 tbsp. spoons;
- butter (peanut) - 2 cups;
- milk powder (skim) - 2 cups (+/- 0.5).
Mix butter and honey in a cup and gradually add milk powder to make a mass from which it will be convenient to sculpt.
Whatever plasticine you decide to make, you can not only please your child, but also help him develop in a playful way.