Sunday’s weather was such a drab compared to the beautiful sun we had on Saturday! I know, I know… it’s the middle of October so I shouldn’t really complain about the rain because we did have the longest heatwave since forever and last month was pretty mild to say the least. I don’t know… maybe it’s because I had my holiday in Ibiza at the end of September so I’m still in that summer-mindset.

Anyway, we tried something different last weekend. Usually I would just sit in front of the TV with the kids on a lazy Sunday afternoon but I remembered I purchased a play Dough kit from sensory play supermum and blogger, Nahdia from NahdzAdventures and thought “today would be the perfect day to play with the kit”… and so we did!

On Sundays, Nahdia updates her instagram account, @nahdz_adventures with fantastic photos, IG stories of her and her gorgeous boys going all out on the sensory play for ‘Sensory Sundays’.

The kit I chose was a butterfly themed one and set me back just £10.00 – it comes complete with two generous-sized natural, child-friendly homemade play dough (yass!), a handful of cut pipe-cleaners, lots of coloured lolly sticks, flower sequins and tiny buttons – all neatly packed in a cute white storage box which is my fave. We had one green play dough and one brown one which I turned into blue with some leftover Food Colouring in the cupboard as little man wanted blue. As I bought the kit a while ago, there was some crunchy salt residue around the dough but no problem at all. I just rolled it in my hands with the food colouring, added a little oil and voila – it was good as new again! Now I bought this kit in summer so it’s lasted pretty well. The play dough had not gone off, it still smelt fresh and new.

Note to self… NahdzAdventures makes seriously GOOD homemade play dough.

To my astonishment, the kids actually sat down and played really well with each other. Okay, they didn’t want to share each other’s dough but were nice enough to sit down for at least 30mins sharing the lollysticks, buttons and sequins and actually having fun with crafts. With Ams, she does love all the arts and crafts more than Little man but he had a good go with it.

After 40mins had passed, things started to get messy… we ended up getting glitter involved which went EVERYWHERE, I had an attempt at making my own playdough as Ams wanted a blue one of her own (that got destroyed beyond saving afterwards), and the whole kit was on the floor. Usually I would’ve had a fit at that point but something inside me that changed my mindset – I was cool as a cucumber. I think it was a realisation that this was the one craft activity that I didn’t mind being messy – I was happy to clean it up as the kids had so much fun with it and seeing their smiley faces light up… just that thought alone was enough to get me by.

… also, the whole kit is reusable so why on earth wouldn’t I want to pick it all up and pack it away for another day?!

Both of them had a little bit of help in the end to create their final masterpiece; Little man wanted to make a butterfly so I helped him section the wings and he did the rest. Ams wanted to make a panda so I created the body outline and she was adamant she wanted to do the rest.

As this went down so well, I’ll try another crafty Sunday with them and we’ll see if we can get the same response. If not then maybe we’ll save it for another rainy day… I’m sure they’ll be eager to crack open the play dough box again VERY SOON.

Play dough recipes are widely available online so you can easily make your own. Or if you’re like me and can never really get it right and don’t know how/have the time to piece all the little crafty bits together, the play Dough Kit is really nice to have… they also make good gifts.

PS. if you’re London-based, Nahdia holds sensory play workshops monthly on a Saturday … look out for them on Eventbrite or Hoop – we’ve been a few times and they are super fun! (Check out our photos from previous workshops below)