Homemade White Clay: Why we need to Fail with our kids

Homemade White Clay: Why we need to Fail with our kids, a photo by areyousureaboutthatblog on Flickr.

Don't you love finding those great homemade crafts on Pinterest. My Pinspiration "White Clay" activity caught my eye because of the gorgeous bright white color of the dough. And the cute cookie cutter ornaments made with the dough, and the ability to paint the baked ornaments.... Yada Yada Yada!!! All looks nice on the PIN.

Venting time: can't do any if this fun "white clay ornaments" and painting them afterwards if the dough flakes and when you finally do get an ornament made it disintegrates coming out of the oven. Vent complete.

We totally enjoyed the mixing, measuring, stirring and talking about our science, err um, I mean fun craft. I squeeze I learning everywhere we can!!! We ate lunch as the dough cooled for about 10 minutes or so.

Project Fail, White Clay Dough
Recipie we followed:

Bright White Clay Dough

Ingredients:
2 cups of baking soda
1 cup of cornstarch
1 cup of water

Directions:
1. Combine baking soda, cornstarch and water in a medium pot and stir over medium heat until all ingredients are dissolved.
2. Continue to stir over medium low heat until mixture thickens.
3. Once thick, immediately remove from heat and transfer mixture into a mixing bowl. Be careful, mixture will be hot!
4. Cover with a cold damp dish cloth until cool enough to knead.
5. Knead dough until soft and smooth. If mixture is too dry, add a few drops of water at a time and knead until a softer, workable consistency is reached.
6. Roll out dough to 1/4" and cut into shapes as desired.
7. Bake finished creations on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet in a warm oven (I do mine at 175 degrees F for about two hours, flipping them over about half way through baking.) Allow to cool completely in the oven.
8. Once completely dry, finished creations can be painted with acrylic craft paints and sealed with a craft sealant.
9. Wrap unused dough in plastic wrap to keep it fresh.

We did make the dough by heating ingredients in the pot. My first tip that is failed was the smooth texture of our version. It should have been "stickies" and looked more lumpy. And just as every good scientist knows, you will learn during the process, and learn from your failures.

Here's younger son enjoying the warm dough.

Here my younger son is enjoying how warm it is to his hands. He's been under the weather so mommy's homemade chicken soups in the pic too.

My next indicator of failure was the lack if bonding in the clay / sticking to the table and not as pliable as it should be.

Younger son loved playing with his "mountain." He wasn't into ornaments and cookie cutter shapes. He instead had the "cat" eat the "fish" but applying one cutter image over the other. And I can't say enough about the gross and fine motor skills needed to push, press, pinch, and shape the dough.

He was not frustrated - as was the adult in the room (me) - with the dough flakes, pieces and chunks that were falling off said mountain.

Baby girl enjoyed watching us, and touching the warm dough. Otherwise he was more into the cookie cutter shapes, and less into playing with the dough.

I rolled out the dough, into thicker and thicker segments. The cookie cutter shapes would break apart. Then the dough would stick to the table. Just frustrating. Add the flaking dough and it was not fun (for mom).

However baby girl loved flaking pieces all over the floor. And throwing cookie cutters on top.

Afterwards I took my dozen ornaments in animal shapes into the oven for 60 minutes at 175.

Here's our table after the experiment. Younger son is putting flakey dough remnants into a Baggie (so older son can enjoy after school).

And like our favorite clean up time song says: "you can clean where it's small and I can clean where it's tall." For the first time my 4 year old used the vacuum cleaner and picked up the flakey pieces. Baby girl and I wiped up the table each with our own sponges.

Cleaning may have taken longer then the entire project - cooking and molding together.

As for the baking, everything went smoothly. Then I removed the ornaments, and as the tray cooled I nudged one, and the leg came off. I nudged the duck beak and it flaked apart. All the pieces disintegrated. All of them. And the little rolled "balls" of dough we thought we'd make marbles from, they cracked, and dented. So interesting flops all the was around.

But even with the failures, we had fun. And we lived a real experiment. We need to fail with our kids too. Talking about our projects. What we were making. How it felt. It was "fun mommy." And then as you know real life doesn't work 100% of the time. So my kids also need to experience failures so they know how to handle disappointment. And they can learn to persevere, and try again, and again until we reach success. And you can't beat that.

The flop
We think we didn't add enough baking soda. My younger son remembers adding 1 cup of everything instead of a single 2-cup ingredient.

We will revisit this project. And try a smaller batch recipie. It's a low cost flop, but a high impact failure experiment... Again positive for my kids experiences.

Make Mistakes (like I did). Breathe. Reflect. And Laugh.Out.Loud. It helps with coping skills and failures.