Time: approx. 5 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients:
½ can shaving cream
¾ cup corn flour
Method:
Mix together in a bowl with a spoon until all the cornflour is wet, then turn it out onto the bench and knead until soft.
I’ve used this two-ingredient cloud dough on many occasions as a fun science/art lesson and students love it. Both the process of making the dough, and the finished product are an adventure in texture and we have used it a few times as a form of sensory meditation.
For the simple version we just used cornflour and shaving cream. We used about half a can of shaving cream mixed with 3/4 cup cornflour. Depending on the environment you may need to add a little more of one or the other.
Use a spoon to mix shaving cream in, slowly! If you do this step fast you’ll end up with cornflour everywhere. Add a little more shaving cream if it’s not combining well, add more cornflour if it feels too sticky.
You will know it’s ready to turn out onto the bench by pressing the back of the spoon into the dough – if it sticks together well and doesn’t crumble you can put it on the bench and start working it with your hands. Press the dough as though you are trying to stick bits of playdough together rather than kneading it. It will take a few minutes but eventually you’ll end up with moldable dough that feels silky and smooth.
You’ll notice how different this dough is to normal playdough – as there is no cream of tartar in the mixture and so it doesn’t have the elasticity that playdough does.
Arty Variations:
Add a drop of food colouring to the dough once it is smooth and ready to be played with (this is a great opportunity to explore colour with your child, mix yellow and blue and watch it turn green)
Add glitter to make it fancy! Blue glitter in white dough for “Frozen” themed, purple glitter in green dough for monster cloud dough, silver glitter in dark blue dough for a night sky theme, gold glitter in yellow dough for sunshine theme.
Use cookie cutters to make shapes or toothpicks to draw on the dough.
Science Variation:
In another bowl try mixing cornflour and cheap hair conditioner. Prompt your child to guess how it will turn out. Will it be softer? Harder? Stickier? Let them feel the texture of the ingredients before they are mixed. How does the shaving cream texture differ from the conditioner? Is this difference reflected in the different cloud dough?
Use this table to record your findings.