Gingerbread Playdough

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Christmas playdough recipes are all about the smells, and this gingerbread playdough is no exception. The fragrant recipe is easy to make and doesn’t require cooking or using boiling water. This makes it perfect for early learners to help make, and they can participate from start to finish.

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The Playdough Ingredients

This scented gingerbread playdough requires no cooking or boiling water. Invite early learners to help make it from start to finish and can experience all the aromatic smells.

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Gather the following for this homemade gingerbread-scented dough:

1 cup flour
½ cup salt
1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger
1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
½ cup water

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How To Make Gingerbread Playdough

This homemade scented gingerbread playdough and the festive loose parts are ready to be explored by little learners.

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Measure all of the above ingredients in a bowl. Invite early learners to help.

Mix the spicy mixture into a dough, and knead it thoroughly. The kneading helps strengthen little helpers’ hand and finger muscles.

Four spices in addition to salt are included in the dough. Allowing your little helpers to smell each one is a rich sensory opportunity.

The spices add color to this all-natural playdough, so no additional color is needed.

Another plus for this homemade playdough is that it can be used in a play invitation as soon as it has been made. It doesn’t need cool down time like a cooked playdough or recipe that uses boiling water would.

This recipe can easily be doubled or tripled to be enough for a group of children.

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Gingerbread Playdough Invitation

After helping make the playdough, little learners will love using it to mold and decorate gingerbread houses and people. Offer loose parts in a party tray for a spicy playdough invitation.

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The loose parts in the tray above are:

gingerbread house and people cookie cutters
gingerbread ornaments
cut sparkly pipe cleaners and pompoms
cut rick rack and straws
buttons
candy cane and gingerbread erasers
bows
bead garland
wiggly eyes

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In this next tray, gingerbread house shapes, felt gingerbread people, beads, and rubber peppermint lollipops are included in the mix.

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Gingerbread Playdough Invitation Benefits

This heavenly-scented playdough invitation offers many benefits:

Exercising creativity by decorating pretend cookies.
Language development by using playdough cutouts to retell gingerbread stories or develop new ones.
Gaining hand and finger strength by rolling, pressing, and kneading dough, and decorating it with loose parts.
Role-playing working in a pretend bakery and baking cookies in a play oven.

Tip: A small box with a rack placed inside makes an easy DIY oven for pretend play.

A cardboard box with a rack set inside makes a terrific play oven to bake gingerbread playdough cookies and muffins.

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How To Store Gingerbread Playdough

This amazing gingerbread-scented dough is not sticky, rolls out just fine, and works well with cookie cutters.

To store it, wrap it in saran wrap and place it in an airtight container. Doing this will keep it nice and moist. To my delight, the playdough is even easier to work with when you pull it out for additional play.

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More Christmas Playdough Recipes:

Christmas Playdough

Chocolate Mint Playdough

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Plaid-Themed Christmas Rice Bin