Playdough Recipe

• 10 lb. bag flour
• 2 gallons water with food coloring or other nontoxic color
• 1 gallon salt
• 1 quart cream of tartar
• 1 quart vegetable oil
• 3/4 c vanilla or other flavoring or scent (optional)

In a really, really large saucepan, stir over medium heat until it forms a ball. After it cools a bit, knead in smaller batches. If you want to make different colors or 'flavors,' add them as you do the kneading, batch by batch, instead of mixing them into the big pot.

• 10 Things to Do With Playdough

The Playdough Story

I got started with the playdough when I was working with a group that said they wanted a ‘retreat,’ but then kept piling more and more work into shorter and shorter time frames.  In desperation to maintain some element of relaxation in what proved to be one of the most grueling meetings of my career, I got out my old playdough recipes and mixed up a very large batch.  I put fragrant oils and unusual colors in each ball, and braved the skeptical people at airport security.

I think the playdough saved us.  Every time the group approached a tense issue, I would notice people grabbing the playdough and working it.  It helped relieve the tension.  Sometimes they would just mash the playdough around.  And sometimes they would make sculptures or funny cartoony-figures that would provide comic relief. 

With this group (which had been meeting for some time before I was brought on), there may have been a tendency to dismiss one of the participants.  I believe this sort of thing—a group pecking order—is not only hard on the individual but also injurious to the overall group trust.  Yet I had not managed to help them shift that dynamic. Until the playdough.  The person is a gifted artist, and she made one stunning playdough sculpture after another.  The sculptures weren’t just technically stunning, but they told a story, often a metaphor for the abstract issues the group was discussing.  That was the shift.

Since I was going through my ‘biochemisty of conflict’ phase (from which I have not yet fully recovered,) I went to the library and tried to figure out what was going on.  It seems touch and squeezing are powerful ways to defuse tension—something that should be obvious at an intuitive level.  So I now use manipulatives whenever I feel I can get past the "don't make me feel silly factor."  If I think people are not in the mood for playdough, I will bring squeeze balls.  I just put one at each place and don’t make a big deal about it.  People can use them or not. 

To sit in a room for hours, at the same table with one’s (sometimes bitter) adversaries, is extremely difficult.  If having a manipulative makes it easier, then I want my parties to have that.  But more (back to the biochemistry bit) anything that can ease tension enhances people’s problem-solving abilities. So I am all for it.

"As a facilitator and mediator, Carie has a great deal of experience creating an atmosphere within which ideas can flourish and be heard..."
— Child care provider and mediation party