Spicy Apple Play Dough for the Sensory Table

Deliciously scented apple play dough is perfect for a preschool apple theme!

apple play dough that smells delicious!

We have had this awesome-smelling apple play dough at preschool since the very first day!  As I mentioned previously, September’s theme is “An Apple for the Teacher”.  Playdough is always a hit with the kiddos, so I knew I wanted to incorporate it into our first week of school.  This sounds so dorky, I know, but I am so proud of how well this play dough recipe turned out!  🙂

Materials Needed for the Spicey Apple Playdough

The base of the recipe is The Imagination Tree’s “Best Ever No-Cook Play Dough Recipe!”  This is one of my favorite basic play dough recipes, alongside those found at Nurturestore.  I didn’t add glycerine to my play dough (since I didn’t have any on hand), and I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil (since I had run out).

Below is a list of ingredients for the original recipe, along with the items I used as substitutions and added. I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

• All-purpose flour – 2 cups
• Vegetable oil or olive oil– 2 tablespoons
• Salt – 1/2 cup
• Cream of tartar – 2 tablespoons
• Boiling water – 1-1.5 cups
• Gel food coloring (optional)
• Glycerine
• Vanilla spice sensory salt

Making the Play Dough

The Imagination Tree made it super simple for anyone to create the play dough. Follow their straightforward recipe and you’ll have the perfect base for your spicey apple play dough.

Helpful hint — If you want to add food coloring to your play dough, add it to the hot water.  For my first batch, I added the coloring after I’d mixed up the wet and dry ingredients.  This made it harder to get the color I wanted.  I added the coloring to the water before mixing the wet and dry ingredients for the second batch.  This made it SO much easier for me to add the amount of color I wanted without making much of a mess.

Once I had the basic play dough recipe ready to go and colored the way I wanted it, I added the spices.  I have got to tell you, this is where the simple red play dough was transformed into apple play dough that smelled divine — as if there was apple pie nearby!  When I made this play dough, I didn’t have the spices I wanted (yes, apparently I needed to go grocery shopping).  I turned, instead, to my stash of vanilla spice sensory salt.  The combination of spices, and a “secret” ingredient, helped make this apple pie play dough.  I added about 2 heaping tablespoons to each batch, making sure to remove the whole spices from the sensory salt.

The preschoolers had a BLAST with this playdough!  I put the play dough in our discovery center, along with different lengths of green pipe cleaners.  The kids made different-sized apples and added pipe cleaner “stems” — some even went so far as adding the long stems to the big apples and the small stems to the small apples.  They also made stacks of apples and even apple “snowmen”.  A few created their own versions of apple pies, and still, others just had fun poking the pipe cleaners into the play dough.  While the play dough was out, our classroom smelled like an apple pie bakery (but not overwhelmingly so). Yum!

Have you ever made a spicy version of apple play dough?  Or any other kind of scented play dough?  This one was such a hit that I’m sure we’ll be creating more this year.

Shared at Discover and Explore: Fall

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