For as long as I can remember, me and the kids have built and decorated a gingerbread house together in the run up to Christmas. It's a lovely festive activity but after we'd made it, I can't remember a single occasion where we actually ate it! The gingerbread in those kits is pretty rock solid and not particularly tasty plus if I'm honest I'm a bit of a sweetie scrooge and I don't love the idea of the kids actually eating all that icing and sweets, especially when they were younger.

So it was with this in mind that I set about creating our Gingerbread Sensory Dough Making Kit.  This set includes everything that you need to make two batches of play dough, one for your gingerbread and one for your vanilla icing, all you need is boiling water and a mixing bowl! All the ingredients are pre-weighed for ease and come in plastic free packets.

‍

Making the play dough is a great activity all by itself and believe me, there is nothing like that fresh, warm dough feeling and the smell of the gingerbread play dough rivals the real thing! Baking with children also has so many developmental benefits, it can boost their language as you talk about what you're doing, they can practice reading with our simplified, illustrated recipe card, improve their maths skills as they measure and weigh the ingredients and help their fine motor skills with all that pouring, scooping and mixing.

In addition to your play dough making ingredients, the kit includes 2 acrylic candy canes, a bag of red and white glass pebbles and a miniature wreath to decorate your house with. We've also included a wipe clean play dough mat that you can use as a template for making your house and a gingerbread man cutter. Children can press their dough onto the mat to make the shape of their house and then they can really get creative as they decorate it.

If you have older children, or you're just feeling super creative, you could even try and use your play doughs to build a three dimensional house. The kids and I had so much fun making and decorating our house for our photoshoot last year that we've actually done it again several times. To provide support for our play dough structure, we used a juice carton, cutting off the top third and then rolling out and pressing our dough onto the sides.

Your homemade play dough will last for 3-6 months if stored in an air tight container so you can play with it time and time again.

‍

You can shop our Gingerbread Sensory Dough Making Kit here.