Homemade 'cloud dough'!

A while back, I Pinned a recipe for Cloud Dough, which is kind of like homemade Moon Sand. I thought it might be fun to make (and EASY, which is the real key), so I saved it for a rainy day and made it a couple of weeks ago.

I got the recipe from Pre-school Play, a blog that has lots of great ideas.

This particular mixture is really easy to make. It's eight cups of flour, plus one cup of baby oil. (I pulled the first two pictures off of Pre-school Play, because I forgot to take pictures when I was mixing my batch up.)

You just mix it together (I did it with a big spatula), and it's ready to go!

The first day they played with it, I let them spread it out on the kitchen island, which has a virtually indestructible granite top. They did great, but it still made a big mess on the floor.

So last weekend, I set it out on the front porch and let them dig to their hearts' content. (Then I just swept away what spilled out.)

It's a really neat consistency ... it doesn't stick to your hands like beach sand, but you can mold shapes with it like you can with wet sand. You could easily let your kids use their beach toys while playing with this stuff.

Nick was the one who asked to play with it again ... he's really creative and artistic, and he wants to build, mold, shape, color ... whenever possible.

Jake was fascinated with the way he could pound out a flat spot, then stick his finger in it and crack it. He said it looked like an earthquake had happened.

He considered every little thing he did with the sand a big victory!

They played in it for about an hour before they got bored, which I think was a great amount of time for something so simple.

The one disclaimer is that it IS messy, so I'd keep it on your porch, deck, garage floor, driveway ... somewhere where you could hose it or sweep it off. Or even a plastic tablecloth from the Dollar Store on your kitchen floor would work.

Happy digging!