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Are you ready for fall?  This Pumpkin Play Dough smells amazing. It reminds me of the smell that’s outside when you are cooking Thanksgiving dinner on a cool fall day!

I decided that I had to experiment at home to find a non-stick slime or a scented playdough recipe for this for our kids to play with at home… and I made one that works!

I wanted to share this with you because we made it together and all of the kids loved it, plus, it is non-toxic, so if they try to taste it, it isn’t harmful.  Our son’s preschool class was playing with Pumpkin Pie Playdough this week.  Their room smelled fantastic!   The secret- it was flavored with pumpkin pie spice.

pumpkin playdough 1
This pumpkin pie scented dough ecipe is easy to make (and you don’t have to run out to buy store bought play dough).  You can double the recipe for a classroom or just have more of it… because you’re going to give it to the kids to play with often after you see how it makes the whole room smell like pumpkins and fall days. 
Below you will find the ingredient list and the directions.
Enjoy!

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup salt
  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 Tablespoon cream of tartar 
  • 2 Tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
  • Food Coloring
  • 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Pumpkin Pie Spice (to bring out the fall smell).
  • OPTIONAL: Leaves, bottle lid, cinnamon stick, pipe cleaners, cloves & other fun tools!A pumpkin decoration made out of pumpkin play dough.

DIRECTIONS: 

  • To make this, you will just whisk all of the ingredients in a pan & put it on the stove.
    (You can go ahead & add all of the dry ingredients to the same pan as the wet ingredients because the flour, salt, cream of tartar, etc. all cook together nicely.) 
  •  Cook it on medium heat for a few minutes.  It starts to smell great at this point! 
  •  It will start out runny but quickly form into a ball.
  • When this happens (when it gets thick), remove it from the heat, but continue to stir it.
  • When it is semi-cool, take it out and place it on a floured surface.
  • Knead the homemade playdough.
  • Sprinkle another 1/2 Tablespoon in and knead the dough a little more. 
  • Once it’s ready, you can play with it or store it in a ziplock bag for later play. A pie made out of play dough

OPTIONAL COLOR CHANGES:

If you want to change it up a bit & make multiple colors, here are a few tips:
Red + Yellow food coloring to make it orange (optional)
Do the same color combo again, but more yellow to make it less orange for another color
Do it again, but add more red to make it a deep orange for fall.

More fall colors:

Red + Blue = Purple
Blue + Yellow = Green

Bonus:
Do a bright red & it will look like an apple & smell like apple pie (since the playdough smells more like “fall” than just “pumpkin”  ~ your mind will smell what it sees. 😉

That’s it!! Easy, right?

More posts you might like: 
educational pumpkin activities

5 non academic skills to learn before kindergarten

A close up of many different types of food made with pumpkins.

Hi there!

I’m Becky, a former elementary school teacher turned certified child development therapist and blogger. I work at home with my husband and together we are raising (and partially homeschooling) our four children in the Carolinas. I love diet coke, ice cream, and spending time with my family.

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7 Comments

  1. Just made this for my daughter (2) and it does smell great but my coloring didn’t work out well. The pumpkin pie spice made it sorta brown so when I added the colors to make orange, its now an orangey brown. I was hoping for a bright orange. Oh well, she will still enjoy this. Thanks!

    1. I made this for my classroom as well as our church harvest party. I used the food coloring used to color buttercream, it worked great! I got a vibrant orange playdough.