How to make homemade pumpkin spice play dough

There’s nothing quite like homemade pumpkin spice play dough. If you’re going to make play dough at all during the Autumn months, then this should be one of your ‘go-to recipes.’

When it comes to Autumn, I’m really quite predictable. I love cosy jumpers, long walks and a good old pumpkin spice latte. I’ve wanted to make this play dough for some time, yet couldn’t source any pumpkin spice mix (it was rather expensive from Amazon) so I eventually googled a recipe and made my own – turns out it was pretty simple…

Homemade pumpkin spice play dough is one of our favourites, because once you’ve made the spice, it’s so easy to replicate year after year. Of course, the name ‘pumpkin spice’ is a little misleading, because there isn’t actually any pumpkin in the recipe, but it will give you that classic aroma that we all associate with ‘Pumpkin Spice lattes’.

Depending on where you are in the world, pumpkin spice mix might be hard to obtain. I’ve lived in Austria for the last few years and when we first started making pumpkin spice dough, I couldn’t get the pre-mixed versions anywhere. Amazon searches yielded expensive results from American imported mixes, so I eventually googled a recipe and made my own – turns out it was pretty simple…

How to make pumpkin spice mix

This recipe was sourced from Taste of Home, with slight adjustments. Just to note, you need to be super careful with nutmeg as it is a hallucinogenic – check out this article for extra information. As a result, I wouldn’t recommend this recipe for children who are likely to taste test or alternatively, just leave the nutmeg out.

You will need:

• 4 tsp of ground ginger (the original recipe called for 2, but I wanted a lighter colour on mine)
• 4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp of cloves
• 1/2 tsp of nutmeg

The above will be enough for the play dough itself, however if you want to make enough for actual seasoning too, then double the quantities.

We put all of the ingredients into a pestle and mortar, then my children ground it all down to mix. This was a great opportunity for them to smell the ingredients and to work on hand strength. It smelled exactly like the pumpkin spice lattes I love – yummy!

Our no-cook Play Dough Method

In order to make this homemade pumpkin spice play dough, you simply need to follow our basic play dough recipe and add a little sprinkle of spice. I recommend starting with just a little spice as too much will dry out the dough.

When making play dough with your little one at home, I really recommend opting for the no-cook method. This allows your child to be fully involved in the process. You can find the exact recipe that we use here. 

As you can see from the photographs in this blog post, both of my children love to help and especially when it comes to making homemade pumpkin spice play dough. They love grinding up the spices with a pestle and mortar just as much as they like making the dough itself!!

Homemade Play Dough Care Tips

Ingredients

Without cream of tartar, the dough would get crumbly fast, but now we have lovely soft, smooth play dough again – yay!

Storage

Generally speaking, keeping the dough in a cool dry place will be enough to make it last for up to 4 weeks. However, in the summer we have occasionally kept the dough in the fridge to stop it from going sticky.

What to do with dry dough:

How to prevent sticky dough:

Why you should make play dough with your children:

• Introduction to early math: From counting cups or spoonfuls to measuring out quantities, there’s heaps your little one can learn from this practical activity.
• Hand-eye coordination: it takes focus to pour ingredients from the packet into the bowl
• Fine motor skills and hand strength: using pincer grip to hold the teaspoon and hand strength to mix the ingredients.
• Sensory exploration: making play dough engages the senses, although I should add that tasting is not recommended due to the salt content!
• Social emotional: this is a lovely way to spend time together. I like to think of it as a lower stakes version of baking!
• Making connections to the wider world: In this instance, making a nest but play dough can really be adapted for so many small world activities!
• Listening skills: Via verbal instructions.

Age Recommendations:

You should make sure that your child is past the stage where they put everything in their mouths. This will depend on the child. With my daughter, I could do all of these activities with her from around the age of 12 months, yet her younger brother was around 2.5 when he stopped putting everything in his mouth!

To note, until your child gets used to these types of activities, you can absolutely guarantee a gigantic mess. This is partly because of the development of fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Don’t worry though, the more they are exposed to sensory / messy play, the tidier they eventually become!

Regardless of age, this activity should be done under supervision.

Activity Ideas for Homemade Pumpkin Spice Play Dough

Play dough is such a brilliant resource for building hand strength and fine motor skills. Even if you child simply squishes and rolls the dough, it will be an excellent activity!

Cafe Play

To boost speech and language skills, try adding your homemade pumpkin spice dough to a cafe scene. As you can see in the photo above, we also added takeaway coffee cups and nature treasures:

Making Homemade pumpkin spice play dough pie

Autumn Blog posts to read next:

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt story basket

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt pre-writing skills  activity 

21 Autumn Ideas for the Entire Family

Autumn Activities for Kids: 25 Playful Prompts

Are you currently planning all things Autumn?

If you enjoyed this hammering pumpkins activity idea, you might just like my exclusive membership, ‘How I drink my Coffee Hot’ too. The membership costs just $5 per month and you get access to 10 mini courses on a range of topics including sensory play, play spaces and starting school. Here are some membership posts that you might enjoy:

Autumn at Home Art and Sensory Camp

Family Rhythms for Autumn

Autumn Break with Kids 

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