Toddler Tuesday: Fun with Kool-Aid

Flour, oil, salt, cream of tarter, and Kool-Aid

Just take these few ingredients and whip up some Kool-Aid fun with play-doh and finger paint.

Calan is once again not feeling well (I think this is going to be a long winter). However, I tried out a few fun Kool-Aid recipes I found online. I thought he might enjoy playing with Play-Doh and I thought I would try finger paint even though he hates things on his hands.

Calan liked playing with the Play-Doh up till the moment he realized he could throw it off the tray. 

And finger paint did not work for us. He hated it on his hands, and this is when he realized it got on his truck and he couldn't get it off. (Frugal tip: Use old t-shirts as smocks.) 

And, I was right. He liked playing with the Play-Doh for about 10 minutes and the finger paint was a complete flop. All I can do is keep trying different things with him and let him explore them for as long (or as little) as he wants.

Here is what I did:

• For finger paint, take 1 cup flour, 1 Kool-Aid packet, and 1/4 cup salt and mix it with 1 1/2 cups boiling water and 1 1/2 tablespoons (1 1/2 teaspoons equals 1/2 tablespoon)
• For Play-Doh, mix 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/4 cup salt, 1 Kool-Aid packet and 1 tablespoon cream of tarter with 1 cup boiling water and 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil. Mix with fork till cool and then mix with hands till well blended kneading and adding additional flour till no longer sticky.

Things that I learned from making it:

• Don't use wheat flour. It is all that I had and it obviously distorted the color. The Play-Doh was suppose to be blue, but looks green. I ended up adding green food coloring to both the play-Doh and finger paint to get richer colors.
• I ended up using a lot more flour in the play-Doh to make it not sticky, next time I might just start out using a 1/4 cup more flour.
• I added water to the finger paint till I got the consistency I wanted. Not sure if the wheat flour made it drier, but it was really gooey and sticky at first, I wanted a thinner consistency.
• I will probably split both in half, but still using whole packet of Kool-Aid per half. I think that it will make better colors and I don't need that much finger paint or Play-Doh in one color, which is what I have now.