Science with Samantha: Cloud Dough (2024)

FAQs

What is the science behind cloud dough? ›

By mixing the cornstarch and conditioner, your ingredients go through a physical change. Your ingredients change shape and appearance, but a new chemical substance is not formed. You could still separate the cornstarch and the conditioner in your dough in the right chemistry lab!

This easy no-cook dough requires just 2 ingredients: cornstarch and hair conditioner. Easy enough! Mix equal parts together in a bowl. There is no cooking required and students can get their hands messy while helping to make it.

How to Make Cloud Dough. You will need cornstarch, baby lotion, and food coloring if you want to make different colors! The recipe below makes 4 small balls or 1 giant one. My son loved to mix the colors together, he said the pink and blue one looked like cotton candy!

Start off with a little conditioner or shampoo in the bowl. Mix in some flour or corn starch and start folding the two ingredients together. Add in the food coloring of your choice. Keep mixing, rolling, and experimenting with the flour and conditioner until the dough comes together!

Aside from being easy to make, cloud dough is also easy to store. In an airtight container, cloud dough can last months – and if the mixture starts to dry out, just add in a little more baby oil.

Cloud dough is great for squishing, stretching and shaping. It's the ideal material to help little ones develop their manual dexterity and improve fine motor skills. It's also perfect for STEM learning. It's made using cornflour, so it can be more liquid or solid depending on how it's handled (a non-Newtonian fluid).

Notes. You can use any conditioner but scented is really fun to make it a sensory experience for your kiddos! If you don't have scented conditioner you can also add in a few drops of essential oils. Instead of cornstarch, you can use regular all-purpose flour as well.

Store the cloud dough for future play in an airtight container. Really, this stuff doesn't go bad. You know you'll need to toss it when it gets impossible debris in it.

Have you ever heart about 'Cloud dough' and 'Moon sand'? It is basically the same thing: it uses the same basic two ingredients namely flour(of some sort) and oil(of some sort).

All you need is: - 1 part baby lotion or conditioner (we used 1/3 cup) - 2 parts cornstarch (we used 2/3 cup)

How do you make DIY cloud dough? ›

Add 1/2 cup of lotion to a bowl. Add 1-2 drops of the food coloring (if using concentrated gel, if using regular food coloring you'll need more drops to color) and mix. Mix the lotion and food coloring until combined. Add 1 cup of cornstarch and mix.

Mix flour, baking soda, and vegetable oil to make the cloud dough. Use spray bottles or eye droppers to spray vinegar into the mixture and watch it fizz!

Making cloud dough is incredibly simple. All you need is flour and oil (baby oil or vegetable oil works well). The typical ratio is 8 to 1 of flour to oil, but you can adjust to get your preferred consistency. Add food colouring or glitter for a visual twist, or scented oils for a sensory boost.

Cloud dough requires only 2 common household ingredients: Baby Oil and Flour, and it's ready in minutes. It smells heavenly, and it's a delight to run your fingers through! I'm a sucker for a good, homemade sensory play activity, and this flour and baby oil Cloud dough is something I've been waiting all winter to make!

Combine gluten and water, and a network of long, unorganized, knotted gluten strings will form. Kneading aligns these strings, creating a dough you might be able to stretch so thin you can almost see through it. The more gluten, the more elastic, stretchy and strong the dough will be.

The warm water vapor mixes with air and smoke particles. It rises inside the jar and then cools when it comes near the tray of ice. As the water vapor cools, it condenses into very tiny droplets on the smoke particles. When enough condensation occurs, we see it as a cloud.

Flour and salt are both solids while water is a liquid. When these ingredients are combined, a soft, pliable salt dough forms. When the dough is dried, the liquid water transforms into a gas and evaporates from the dough, leaving a hard, dry salt dough substance in its place.

It has all sorts of names: Kinetic Sand, Sensory Dough, Moon Sand, Cloud Dough…the list goes on. No matter what you call it, kids love playing with this stuff. And it's great for their imagination!