Taste-Safe Coconut Cloud Dough Recipe to Make This Summer

This coconut cloud dough recipe smells beautiful, and will have the kids engaged and excited for hours this summer.

This cloud dough recipe was inspired by our toddler safe play sand, as well as a summer camp fulled with coconutty preschool summer activities! Yes, I know that coconutty isn’t a word, but it seemed to fit in here.

Coconut Cloud Dough Recipe 

Related: Messy Play Ideas at Home

I love this recipe, especially because it’s taste-safe. This is perfect for little ones who might still put things in their mouths sometimes.

If that’s the case in your classroom or home, I’d suggest keeping the cloud dough out, but I wouldn’t put the smaller pieces in like we did.

Oh and the scent was just divine! I happen to love the smell of coconut, and it made me think of the beach the entire time we were making and playing with this.

Ingredients we used

White flour
Vegetable oil
Coconut extract
Whole coconut

Other Items We Incorporated

Tiny umbrellas
Sea glass
Large plastic bins
Sand toys
Scoops

How the Kids Played

To start everything off, the children and I taste-tested some fresh coconut.

Wait, back up . . . me cracking open a whole coconut started everything off! For tips on how to do just that, I’d suggest checking out this helpful video.

Once that was taken care of, we all tried some coconut.  I already knew I liked it, but the kiddos weren’t too fond of it.

Next up, we shredded most of the “meat”, then we mixed up a batch of the coconut cloud dough recipe described below.

I dumped the coconut cloud dough into a large bin, grabbed the rest of our supplies, and set everything up on our back porch.

Right away, they were feeling and scooping the cloud dough.  They especially loved using the coconut shells to scoop, pour, and shape the dough.

The children built “sand castles”, decorated coconut bowls of dough with sea glass, and decorated with the tiny umbrellas.

Engineer and Snoopy worked together to create a beach with the coconut cloud dough.

They made up all kinds of stories about what they did at the beach!

The younger kiddos kept busy transferring the dough between bins and pressing items into it.

After about an hour, the older boys’ beach scene had spread.  We had to bring in reinforcements with a big batch of our play sand!

Another hour elapsed before the boys finally called it a day – after asking me three times, “can we do this again tomorrow?”

Then it was onto snacks – playing with cloud dough is hard work!

Coconut Cloud Dough Recipe

I made a large batch since I knew how much the children would love it –

• 1 five-pound bag of basic white flour
• 2 cups of vegetable oil
• Coconut extract (I added about half the small bottle)
• Fresh, shredded coconut

Have the kids help put everything into a large bowl and mix!  I didn’t measure the coconut extract exactly, but aimed to give the dough a light scent.

For a smaller batch, the recipe would be 4 cups of flour mixed with 1/2 cup vegetable oil.  Baby oil can be used in place of the vegetable oil if you’re not worried about the dough being taste-safe.

Other Fun Coconut Cloud Dough Recipes

After I’d written this up to share with you, I came across two more ideas for a coconut cloud dough recipe! Do you have a favorite way to make it?

• The Imagination Tree’s take on it
• And Next Comes L’s version

More Summer Play Ideas

Don’t forget to check out my blogging friends’ fun summer ideas –

Mini Sand Play Set from Play Trains

Rocky Shore Smal World with Ocean Play Dough from Buggy and Buddy

10 Ideas for Playing in the Rain from Nothing if Not Intentional