How to Make Clay

Tap to Read ➤ Rutuja Jathar

To make a clay at home needs correct combination of some household ingredients. Read on to know some homemade clay recipes...

Parents often struggle to keep that TV and PlayStation remote control away from their kids. Let me tell you that, kids' minds can be easily diverted off televisions and computers, towards some easy arts and craft projects. As kids, playing with clay or play dough has been a favorite pastime of most of us. You can try to nurture the same hobby in your kids.

Clay art is one of the most inexpensive kids' art activities. With various things that can be made using really small amount of clay dough, you really needn't shell a lot of money for that.

As a matter of fact, you can learn how to make clay at home and keep your kids safe and away from chemicals that might be present in ready-made clay.

Making Clay at Home

You can either purchase ready to use clay or try making clay at home, with some really simple and easily available ingredients. There are a few advantages of learning to make clay at home. First of all, you get full assurance about all the kids' craft ingredients that are used in clay and their safety for kids.

Secondly, you can make clay with edible ingredients like all-purpose or plain flour and salt.

Hence, this dough is not harmful for kids, on swallowing. There are various ways of making clay like baking, air drying and raw clay making. Here are a few recipes for making clay at home that you can learn and then learn to make clay beads and people out of it!

Recipe #1

Ingredients All-purpose flour, 2 cups Salt, 1 cup Cold water, 1 cup Vegetable oil, 1 tablespoon

Procedure If you want to involve kids in making this clay, then just put all the mentioned ingredients in an easy-to-seal plastic bag and give it to kids. Tell them to knead it well until a dough is formed. Take the dough out of the bag and use it to make clay figures, beads, vegetables or alphabets!

Recipe #2

Ingredients All-purpose flour, 2 ½ cups Unsweetened Kool-Aid, 2 packages Salt, ½ cup Cream of tartar, 1 tablespoon

Procedure Take a medium-sized glass bowl and add all the ingredients in it. Mix them well, until a dough is formed! You can incorporate numerous clay sculpture ideas with this clay. For instance, clay castle, miniature pottery, clay heads and clay bust!

Once you learn how to make clay at home, then you can determine the crafts that the kids should perform with it. Difficulty level of these crafts should always depend on experience level, age and grasping capacity of the kids!

Recipe #3

Ingredients Baking soda, 1 cup Cornstarch, ½ cup Cold water, ¼ cup

Procedure First of all, add all the ingredients in a medium-sized skillet and then stir it well. Make sure that it is smooth and free of clots. Then set the skillet on medium to low heat and bring the mixture to boil. Keep stirring until it starts to boil.

Make sure that the mixture has consistency of mashed potatoes. Then, pour the mixture from skillet on a dry glass plate and cover it up with a damp kitchen towel. Once it gets cool, you can dust it with a little bit of cornstarch, so that it doesn't stick to the working surface or hands!

Recipe #4

Ingredients All-purpose flour, 2 cups Salt, ½ cup Powdered alum, ½ teaspoon Water, ¼ cup

Procedure Mix all the ingredients well and make clay people or any such objects of it. Then, place the clay objects in a un-greased baking tray. Bake them for about half hour and remove them from the oven.

Turn sides of the objects and bake them again for an hour. Once they get cool, smoothen them with sandpaper first and then use colors and varnish for decorating them. Needless to say, the baking part of the recipe should be performed by an adult only.

Now that you know how to make clay with some easy recipes, you can now teach numerous ideas of clay art for kids. In order to make the clay craft more interesting for kids, you can add food coloring to it.