Cornmeal Castles Sensory Play
Kids Sensory Activity – Sand Castle Dough!
This interesting dough is made much like the Cloud Dough you’ve probably seen (here’s one version at the Imagination Tree), only with cornmeal instead of flour which makes for a neat texture and sandy color.
Cornmeal Sand Castle Dough:
All you need is two ingredients:
- Cornmeal and
- Oil (I used olive oil, but the type you use isn’t real important)
If I had to guess, I’d say approximately 2 cups cornmeal to 3/4 cup oil, but you’ll have to mix and feel for a consistency you like as you go. We’d been playing with cornmeal as a sensory experience recently, so I still had the baking dish out full of cornmeal when I thought of this idea. I just poured oil in until the consistency felt right.
Extend the Play:
This dough feels great in your hands and can be shaped and squished. Add a few toys and you’ve got even more fun.
You can start out with nothing in the bin except the dough and slowly add a few things and it will extend the length of time your child plays and allow them to thoroughly investigate each new element of play.
To make clean up easy you can put this out in a bin over a table cloth, play outside with it, or put a smaller bin inside of a larger shallow bin (such as an under the bed plastic storage container.)
Happy swishing and scooping and play!
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Super fun and easy fix to rainy day blues. I didn’t want to bring out the boring old cornmeal again…so I googled it and this came up. Easy to make up, and we are still playing with it…35 min and counting! Thank you!
Glad it was fun Natalie. Sensory play works well for us too too cure boredom 🙂
Such activities for kids are very good for their motor skills, and at the same time for understanding on how they take instructions. There are so many childcare centers in Brisbane that have similar activities like these, and there are a few located near the storage facility. It is also good since these are near offices and work places.
Thank you SO MUCH for this recipe. A friend was bringing her older daughter to play with my daughter and I needed something they would both enjoy. It took me 2 mins to make and the girls (and Moms) had an absolute BLAST!! I would never have thought to use corn meal, and it feels just like wet beach sand <3 LOVE it!!
Being the lazy person that I am, I hate cleaning up anything- is this something we could do directly in the bath tub and then rinse it out afterwards? Or would it clog up the pipes? (we have city sewer, not a septic tank) I’m excited this is a non-toxic sensory play – the other similar one I read used flour with baby oil and I didn’t do it since I don’t want my baby eating baby oil obviously.
thanks!
I’d be concerned about it clogging the pipes. I think I would instead put it into a shallow container on top of a large old sheet. That way you can just swoop up and over spill and put it into the trash. You could use a vinyl table cloth to keep the oil from getting through the cloth.
do you need to refridgerate it or will it last in a container on the counter or in a cupboard?
I didn’t refrigerate mine and didn’t have a problem (I mean…not that I looked at the stuff under a microscope to see what germs grew or anything…it didn’t get smelly or moldy though.)
Does this vacum up easily? I want to do this with my kids in my classroom, but we have all carpet.
Hi, how long can you keep the dough? Can it be made in advance, like a day before you want to use it?
Hi Harpa- the dough keeps for a long, long time. I think we had ours for about a month and then it just started seeming grimey.
I love this twist on cloud dough… I’ve got to try it out!
My daughter loves to play with flour and water on the back porch. I’m excited to let her go at this.
This looks like a really fun dough to play with.