How to make Moon Dough - a taste-safe sensory base

We had great fun the other day trying out a new sensory base for our play - Moon Dough! With a similar consistency to kinetic sand, it forms together when compacted and breaks apart when squashed, but is taste safe!

We tried it out with our new ice cream play set from IKEA, and it provided a lot of engagement - creating cones, balls of ice cream, adding sprinkles etc.

With it being such a versatile sensory base that can be coloured and scented how you like, it offers such a variety of play opportunities and is definitely a base we’ll be making again!

Here’s how we made the basic recipe:

• Add 1 cup of cooking oil to 8 cups of plain flour. (If wanting to add food colouring to change the colour of the moon dough, mix this into the oil before putting it in the flour)

• Mix until you have your desired consistency which forms together when compacted in your hand. Add more oil/flour to alter this if necessary. (We should've used a little more oil I think so that it continued to stick together well!)

Here’s how we made it a ‘Raspberry Ripple’ colour for our ice cream play:

• Add a few drops of red/pink food colouring to the oil before adding it to give the base a pink-ish tinge.

• Add a few drops of red food colouring to the mixture once it’s formed the dough mixture and spread these drops through it to create the ‘ripples’

Link to our IKEA Ice Cream Play Set - great for indoor or outdoor sensory tray play!

Hope you enjoy playing with Moon Dough as much as we did. Going to make some? Let us know in the comments below!