Naturally dyed playdough

I'm a bit of a hippy at heart and am always trying to find a safer alternative to, well, everything! My latest being food colourings for cakes and icing. Which is why I began thinking about what foods we eat which are naturally bright and colourful. In my quest I came across some colours which aren't so suitable for sweets (turmeric cake anyone?) but perfect for making playdough.

You can use any dough recipe, there are tonnes out there or click here for our Classic Recipes and for the colours I used:

Purple = Blueberries (I used frozen) Boil them in some water, strained out the berries then used that in place of boiled water in the recipe.

Yellow = Turmeric. Add a few shakes into the bowl before mixing all ingredients together.

Green = Spirulina. I was a bit unsure how this would mix in so I added the powder to the boiling water and mixed it up before adding to the bowl.

Red/dark pink = Raspberries (again, frozen) Boil them in water, strained the pulp out and used the coloured water in place of plain boiling water.

Brown = Cocoa. I replaced some of the flour with cocoa but actually found the dough to be a bit sticky and ended up adding more flour at the end.

Pink= Red cabbage. Boil up some torn up cabbage leaves until the water turns blue-ish then use in place of plain boiled water in the playdough recipe.

Interestingly, the boiled cabbage turned the water a shade of blue but when added to the dry ingredients, it turned the dough pink! 

I made these four colours first & was so impressed it worked I ended up dreaming about these two...

...which I made the next day (these two smell extra yummy)

All ready to go off to Nan's house

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Felt board counting chart

Ladybug has been surprising me with her counting lately and now I find myself counting out everything! I wanted to make her a chart to exemplify each number to help her understand what each number 'means'

At Christmas we made a felt tree to stick on the wall. Ladybug loved taking off all the felt decorations and re-decorating it over and over again. I love how felt sticks to felt! ...and what a perfect way to make a counting chart for her!

You will need some felt squares in various colours (atleast 6 colours), scissors, glue and a pencil.

Use one colour as the backing and then cut out the numbers 1 - 10 using each of the remaining colours.

I used a hot glue gun to secure the numbers in the right place (I though about having these removable too, but decided this could confuse things)

  

Then cut out the coloured dots accordingly. I decided to match the colour of the dots to the numbers so that Ladybug would be able to identify which dots go with which number.

I used blutak to hang it on the wall and let Ladybug explore her new chart. She loves brushing them all off and then we sit and count all the dots back on matching the colours with their right number.

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