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Have you ever played with cloud dough before? It is a really awesome sensory dough to manipulate and play with and it’s only made with two ingredients- conditioner and cornstarch! I find that with those two ingredients, the mixture combined creates three types of sensory experiences: 1) a dough that feels like oobleck as it’s a solid when you put pressure on it to mold it yet when you let it sit in your palm it begins to “melt”, 2) slime because of how it stretches, and 3) play dough as you can shape it with cutouts and what not.

It is completely fascinating and relaxing to play with at the same time! When you mix this amazing cloud dough recipe, you’ll see what I mean!

You can also make your oobleck any color you want to; I made ours a gray color and rubbed glitter all over it so that way it would go along with our galactic space theme, which you can check out our awesome Space Sensory Play here.

So you may be wondering what happens after you make cloud dough. How do you store it? How long do you keep it for? Can you use any conditioner? What can you do with cloud dough? Read on to find the answers.

How Do You Store Cloud Dough?

After you made and played with your cloud dough, you will want to store it so you can use it the next day and the day after that and maybe the day after that. I usually store ours for a few days- about 3- inside of a plastic (ziploc) bag. After about 3 days, it starts to lose its doughiness and becomes more crumbly and sand-like- which is another sensory play in itself!

How Long Can You Keep Cloud Dough?

So going back to the first question, you can keep cloud dough for about 3 days without having to add in conditioner to make it into the cloud dough like consistency again. I haven’t tried this, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work if you did add in a bit more conditioner and kneaded it for a few minutes to make it pliable again. If you tried this out, do let me know how it came out. But honestly, after a few days of straight play, I do toss it if I do not have another play use for it due to hygiene issues.

What Type Of Conditioner To Use?

I think any kind of conditioner would work here. I used the cheapest I could find…but next time I would opt for a better scented conditioner or even a non-scented conditioner. I may even put a few drops of essential oils to make it smell really nice and have a calming, relaxing, or soothing effect.

What Can You Do With Cloud Dough?

So many things! We used it in place of play dough- the kids made cookies, cupcakes, shapes, letters, worms-basically anything and everything that came to their little minds. We stretched it and kneaded it which helps to strengthen fine motor skills and hands muscles.

I used it to create a fun educational sensory play in our space and ocean themes. I love using Safari Ltd. Toob Figurines for imaginative play and the kids have a blast with it. I also like to pair up our sensory plays with books that we read to help tie in our mini lessons.

It’s a really fun dough to play with when you need the kids to be occupied while you cook or clean or need a mini break. (*Adult Supervision Required At All Times. Parental Discretion Advised for what ages should play with this).

Materials

Instructions For Cloud Dough Recipe

Measure 2 cups of cornstarch and place carefully into a mixing bowl.
Measure 1 cup of conditioner. Add a few drops of food coloring and mix into the conditioner at this point. If you are not adding in food coloring, then skip this step.
Carefully pour the cup of conditioner into the bowl of cornstarch.
Mix the cornstarch, conditioner and food coloring together with a spoon.
After the mixture comes together, use your hands to finish kneading.
After dough is formed and can stretch and mold, it's done and ready to play with!
*if it too wet, add a little bit of cornstarch; if it is a little too dry, add a little bit of conditioner. I found that the ratio of 1:2 conditioner to cornstarch works really well.*

Check out my video on How To Make Cloud Dough below:

*Adult Supervision Is Required For All Activities*