You’ll absolutely love making my silky soft 3 ingredient dinosaur dough. It’s so insanely easy to make, yes you only need 3 ingredients (possibly 2). It will have your children playing for hours because playdough is so open-ended and wonderful. Seriously, make this. You guys have loved my fairy dough recipe, it has been my most popular post on Laughing Kids Learn for quite awhile now. With this in mind, I wanted to get a little dough creative once again and share another wonderful recipe but this time for all the children who love dinosaurs! Rawwww
Recommended age: 3 years+
(Strict and active supervision is required at all times. This dough is NOT edible)
Oh my gosh, we had so much fun playing with this simple dough and found ourselves playing for hours. We added some plastic dinosaurs and had them explore and stomp around our made up dinosaur land. It was wonderful. Possum (aged 4 years) pinched, pushed, squashed the 3 ingredient dinosaur dough to create various dinosaur lands, which included caves, mountains and rough terrane.
Playdough of any kind is fabulous for fine motor development, this is no exception. We couldn’t resist the urge to include a bit of outdoor nature. Grass, leaves and twigs were all added to our dinosaur dough as another layer to our play experience.

Silky soft texture
This dinosaur dough has a super silky soft texture. It’s marshmallow soft and children can very easily press objects into it and clearly see, in detail, the markings of their object. It’s really lovely and because of the ingredients it uses, it’s soft on skin and leaves hands smelling so beautiful.
How to make 3 ingredient dinosaur dough
So for this special 3 ingredient dinosaur dough you will need one cup of hair conditioner, that’s right, hair conditioner. It doesn’t matter what brand you use, in fact I used the cheapest conditioner that I could find on my supermarket shelf. After that you’ll want to add 2.5 cups of cornflour (corn starch for those in America). Mix it together carefully in a bowl before adding some brown food colouring or gel. It’s difficult to tell you how much colouring to add as food colouring drops react differently to gel colouring. I used about 1 levelled teaspoon of gel colouring to achieve a dinosaur mud swamp-like colour. Of course you can add more to achieve a darker colour, just be mindful that you don’t want the dinosaur dough too dark that it’s stains little hands.
It’s important to knead the dough very, very well. Depending on what country you are from, ingredients will respond differently so if the mixture is too dry, add small amounts of the conditioner and knead the dinosaur dough until you reach the desired texture. If the dinosaur dough is wet, add small increments of corn flour and knead it through, again until you reach your desired dinosaur dough like texture. This playdough needs to be tightly wrapped in cling film and then stored in an air-tight container. Like all playdough, as it is exposed to air it will start to dry out, however, adding a small bit of conditioner will help restore its texture.
I think this dinosaur dough is going to be one of the best playdough recipes you’ll ever make and your child will ever play with. I encourage you to give it a try, it only takes 3 simple ingredients! Of course it is not edible so be sure to be supervising your child, but you’ll be amazed at the texture and all the wonderful ways your child plays with it.
Do you have a child who likes dinosaurs?
Warning : Please be careful which conditioners you choose to make this as some products can contain ingredients that cause skin irritations
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Thanks for the inspiration, this is a super neat idea! I am going to be trying this with my girls tomorrow as we are homeschooling and this goes along perfect with our “D for dinosaurs” theme for the letter of the week! I believe it will be a huge hit with my girls! (as play dough ALWAYS is here!)
Thank you Brittany! So wonderful to read that you’ll be giving this a go tomorrow with your girls. I hope they have lots of fun with it. It’s regularly requested at our home. Thank you kindly for your comment. π
Yes thank you so much for posting this! I am babysitting a 3 y/o and she lovess dinosaurs! I will definitely be making this with her!!
You’re so very welcome! π
Can this be used to make paw prints for ornaments? Air dried?
Fabulous question Pat. I don’t think it could be sorry Pat. It wouldn’t dry hard, just eventually crumble. I think you would be better to use a salt dough that you bake. If you search for ‘salt dough’ I think I have something that will suit you. π
I have tried all of your projects with my granddaughter.
Oh Susan, you’re a star!!! Thank you so much for your love and support. How old is your granddaughter? π
Can we use flour instead of corn starch
Yes. Corn flour and corn starch are the same. Different names for the same product.
I’m a Head Start Preschool Teacher in Ohio. We just started a dinosaur study. Where do you find gel coloring?
Hi Stacey. I got mine from a local bakery store, but they have lots of them on Amazon. Here is the one I used and it has the brown coloring inside. – http://amzn.to/2jHXe3V
Hi, this sounds like a great dough but could you please advise on how long it lasts? I’m suspecting quite a while in airtight storage but a guide would be very helpful.
Thanks
Hi Gina! Lovely to hear from you. This playdough dries out as you play with it, but that can be fixed with adding a small amount more of conditioner. It seems to restore it quite well. I’d wrap it in cling film and store in an air tight container when it’s not played with. It would really last quite awhile, especially if you just added a bit more conditioner to the mix if it dried out. Hope that helps you Gina. π
This is exactly what I needed today. My little one and I have been stuck at home for a number of days – this really cheered him up and helped cabin fever. So easy too.
YAY! That’s such wonderful news Megan. Thanks for sharing. π