Fun at Home with Kids

All Natural Glowing Playdough

Sunday, May 4, 2014

We love glowing things around here and we love playdough, so we decided to combine the two.  This playdough is all natural and you should be able to pick up all the ingredients to make it at your grocery store.  Not only does it glow brightly, but it also lasts for 4-6 months in a sealed container.  We just love it!

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids


Glowing playdough makes for a fun twist on all those fine motor skills - like cutting.  You can practice cutting a glowing night star!

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids

If you get hungry, you can "bake" a glowing cupcake.

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids

You can use your playdough tools to make glowing spaghetti.

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids

Isn't it so bright?

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids

It was such a fun twist on our usual playdough play.  S really got a kick out of it.

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids
This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

To make glowing playdough, you'll need:

Our Glowing Vitamin (it goes by many different names, depending on the brand - but most stores carry a version of it.  If you want to buy it at a store, write down all the percentages of each ingredient of this vitamin and find one that matches!)  Here is the UK link to the vitamin; here is the Aussie link!
Flour
Water
Vegetable Oil
Cream of Tartar
Salt

Crush 2 of our Glowing Vitamins into a fine powder (if yours are in capsules, open the capsules).  Add the vitamin powder to 2 cups of flour, 4 teaspoons of Cream of Tartar, and 2/3 cup of salt and mix until very well combined.  Next add 2 cups of warm water and 2 Tablespoons of cooking oil.  Whisk this extremely well until there are no lumps.  Add it to a saucepan and cook on medium heat until the playdough completely holds together and is no longer sticking to the pan or your spatula.  If you are not sure if it is done, take a small bit in your hands (adult only - the playdough is quite hot) and roll it.  It should not stick and should have a firm storebought playdough texture.  If it is smooshy or sticky, keep cooking it!  Once it is fully cooked, allow it to cool for several minutes.  Have an adult thoroughly knead it to make sure there aren't any remaining hot spots before handing it over to a child.  

Take the playdough into a dark room and turn on a blacklight to see it glow!  The vitamin will give the playdough a bright yellow color - it's still fun to play with in daylight.  Our kids play with it both ways - in daylight and blacklight.  When you are done playing, seal it in a Gladware or Ziploc bag for another day of play!

All Natural recipe for Glowing Playdough - made with ingredients you can pick up from your grocery store and it lasts for 4-6 months!  From Fun at Home with Kids

To see more of our GLOWING play ideas, click here!


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All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.

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32 comments:

  1. I've got to try this vitamin technique of yours! We recently got a black light and I've used glow water for some things, but it definitely didn't work with cornstarch and water goop. Love your glowing ideas, by the way! :)

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    1. Did you try our glow water? Or the usual one? Because ours should work with cornstarch and water! :) And thank you!!! :)

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  2. Completely AMAZING as always!! I have always admired all of your glowing activities and absolutely have to try this play dough. Skyler would love it :)

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    1. Thank you, Hayley!!!! It's so crazy to see it glow - we have so much fun with it! :)

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  3. Loving this glow play dough. Quick question: do you have to have the black light for it to glow? Can you see it in just a dark room?

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    1. Thank you, Kristen! No, it doesn't glow in the dark - but honestly, most glow in the dark stuff (not natural) loses glow SO quickly it's pretty unfun. Glow sticks do great, but every form of glow in the dark paint, toy, etc, we've tried loses glow after 5-10 minutes. :(

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    2. Are you not able to recharge the glow with a flashlight? I have a glow in the dark ball for my dog that I run a flashlight over to get it back to where it was.

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    3. It's not glow-in-the-dark, it's glowing (fluorescing), so it needs a blacklight to work. :/

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    4. I had some glow-in-the-dark nail polish i picked up at a dollar store and i paint objects and walls with that and you just recharge it with light- I've painted some stars on the wall for at night.

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  4. I love your ideas! Great! This playdough looks so bright! I really need to buy a backlight now :)

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    1. Thank you, Anik! It is SO crazy bright! We do love playing with our blacklight! :)

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  5. It looks so nice! But not even google helped me finding those "glowing vitamins"- no translation or explanation. I have no idea what it is. Medicine? Some chemical powder?

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    1. It's a B vitamin with certain ingredients. The link will lead you to a listing of it on Amazon. You can either buy that one or get one that matches in your local grocery store (just about every grocery store has some version of them), but if you want to buy locally, I recommend writing down the amounts of each ingredient to make sure you get the right one. Some combinations of B vitamins glow very faintly. The name of the vitamin with the correct ingredients changes by brand, so that's why I recommend writing down the amounts or buying one that matches the listing we link to. Hope that helps!

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  6. GAH!!! This is amazing, Asia!! How do you do it :)

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    1. Aw, you are so sweet, Amy!!! I keep meaning to tell you that I made a new recipe for gluten-free playdough with your little guy in mind. Hopefully I'll get motivated to photograph it soon. I actually love it more than our regular gluten doughs - it's SO SOFT! And it would totally work with the glowing vitamin. ;)

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  7. Will this work with a no-cook play dough recipe?

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  8. That glows under backlight, not in the dark. Not the same thing.

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    1. Right. That's why it's called glowing playdough not glow-in-the-dark playdough.

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  9. Is there any substitute for Cream of Tartar? can I use baking powder instead?

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    1. As I understand it, the Cream of Tartar keeps the playdough from crystallizing (due to the salt content). You could make it without it altogether, it just will crystallize sooner - maybe a few weeks instead of a few months?

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  10. This is so cool. Thanks for sharing!!

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  11. Question: Does the B Vitamin complex glow under blacklight when crushed, or does something else in the recipe activate the phosphorescence? I'm wondering because I have a bunch of B Complex vitamins that *seem* to be the same combo of stuff, but I'm hoping to make sure before making the whole recipe!

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    1. It's the vitamins themselves that glow - each B vitamin in the complex does to some extent and cumulatively they produce a nice bright glow. You should be able to check the vitamins in the presence of a blacklight before you start to get your answer! :) Hope that helps.

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  12. Here's to hoping this old post gets any attention. Has anyone tried adding food coloring so that the play dough also is fun in daylight? I'm wondering if it wouldn't mask the glory shown in these amazing pix. I am making this for my first graders. It will glow for our party, but not when they get home. I can save myself the expense of various food colors if anyone out there has tried any specific color(s) or brand(s)/type(s) with success. Thank you Asia for this post!

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    1. I haven't tried it, but I think you could do yellow without causing interference (and the vitamin makes it a bit yellow in daylight as well). I am not positive, but fairly sure that any of the other colors would interfere. If you wanted to try it, I'd use quarter-sized amounts of playdough and add a drop of food coloring to each and test. But I'm fairly sure your best bet will be yellow. Hope that helps!

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  13. Do you think you could add this vitamin to paint to get it to glow?

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    1. In my book 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids I give a few paint recipes it works for. But for regular tempera paint, it doesn't work very well at all. You can sometimes pick up chunks of vitamin that glow, but the paint is very dark.

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  14. Where can you purchase glow vitamins? I've seen this before and they used dry glow paint powder instead of glow vitamins. Children, and I've got to admit, and adults like play dough.

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    1. Just about anywhere. Click on the link above to be taken to a cheap online listing on Amazon.

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