Boredom Busters--homemade clay

Here in this part of Texas, we experienced approximately 3.4 days of winter this year, and I must say we weathered them quite well. Aside from having massive hot cocoa overdoses, this was partly due to having requests to pull out the Homemade Clay recipe. It's really not that messy (for all you OCD moms), and you probably have all the ingredients on hand. If you ARE a bit perfectionistic, you may not care for my ingredient amounts...they take a bit of "tweaking", but mostly because clay seems to vary in consistency from one batch to the next.

Homemade Clay

1 cup salt
1/2 cup water (to start with...you will add approx. 1/2 cup more later)
2 T. oil (baby oil is great for the smell, but cooking oil works just fine)
2 cups flour

Mix well. Add more water bit by bit, until a soft, but not runny, dough forms. It will stick to your hands a little, but should be pliable. Divide, and add drops of food coloring. Mix until you arrive at "dinosaur green", or penguin foot yellow", etc. (You may also want to leave part of the batch off-white.)

Let your children sculpt to their heart's content. Have a baking sheet ready for them to put their finished works of art on. Bake at 250 degrees until clay formations are hard. This usually takes about 45 min. or more, depending on how thick/big the creations are.

Your more serious artist may surprise you with their talent, and if all else fails, you will end up with clay snakes and worms. Lots of snakes and worms.

(This is a shot of my children catching snowflakes on their tongues. What's that, you say? You can't see any snowflakes? Well, trust me, they were there. I think we counted 17.)