Aromatherapy Playdough
One of my favourite things about using essential oils is there ability to positively impact my mood. This is no different for children and essential oils are a safe and effective way to help calm children that may be feeling all the feelings! As an added benefit, using essential oils with playdough allows the child to do something physical versus having them sit still and just breathe in the aroma. My experience as an Early Childhood Educator has shown me that most kids, when feeling those heightened emotions, need a physical outlet and many need a creative one as well. Lavender has been shown to help reduce anxiety (which happens to be on the rise with children); it works quickly and has no harmful side effects making it a suitable option to try before going to synthetic medication (source). I let my daughter pick her own own essential oils to use for this batch and she picked two that are naturally very calming, Peace and Anchor.
*Note: I never use food colouring in our food. I made the exception for this since we won’t be eating it! ;)
Aromatherapy Playdough
Ingredients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 cup salt
- 2 tbsp cream of tartar
- 2 tbsp oil (I used olive oil)
- 1 cup hot water
- Food colouring
- Essential oils (we used Anchor, Spearmint, Citrus Bliss & Peace)
Instructions:
- Combine the first 5 ingredients together, adding more flour if too sticky
- Once combined you can divide the dough into four ball (only if you choose to do different colours and essential oils)
- Add the desired amount of food colouring and knead
- Add 1-4 drops of essential oil to the ball of dough and knead once more
- (We divided our dough into four so we used 1 drop of essential oil per ball)