This Coffee Playdough recipe is the perfect mud play dough for play inside no matter the weather. Coffee playdough acts just like real mud in its squishiness and ooey-ness, but unlike mud it smells amazing! Coffee homemade playdough is easy to make with a few simple ingredients and great for toddlers, preschoolers and older kids love to play with this sensory toy.

text: Mud-Like Coffee PlayDough - a yellow tub filled with homemade coffee playdough with dinosaur plastic toys inside - play dough looks like mud - Kids Activities Blog
Let’s make coffee playdough!

Mud Play Dough – Brown Playdough Recipe

Did you know there is an International Mud Day? Across the globe, countries celebrate International Mud Day on June 29. Whether you are celebrating Mud Day, need a fun indoor activity or just want a new playdough recipe, we have the solution for you today!

Related: Best homemade play dough recipe

Indoor mud play is a new concept for my family, but we thought it might be the perfect thing since sometimes it is too hot to go outside in Texas.

Coffee Play Dough Recipe

We made this brown playdough with coffee grounds that looks just like mud and smells heavenly!

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Ingedients needed to make coffee play dough recipe - Kids Activities Blog - spoon of coffee grounds, oil, flour, sale, cream of tartar and glycerin soap
This is what you will need to make mud playdough!

Ingredients Needed For Coffee PlayDough Recipe

How To Make Mud-Like Coffee Playdough

Step 1

If you are not using glycerin drops, shave a small amount of glycerin soap base and heat until it is melted. Let it cool to warm before adding.

Step 2

Mix flour, cream of tartar, salt, instant coffee, and coffee grounds together in one bowl.

Step 3

Add the hot water, the glycerin, and oil in.

Mud-Like Coffee PlayDough in a yellow bin, plastic lizards, and dinosaurs
Squish it, pat it, and mold your mud coffee playdough.

Step 4

Mix well until you get a pasty consistency.

mud dough in a yellow bin with an orange, red, light green, and dark green dinosaur.
How fun is this mud dough?

Step 5

Put in a container and add dinosaurs and other toys! Enjoy!

Glycerin Drops Vs. Glycerin Soap

Normally when we make this type of playdough, we use glycerin drops. We didn’t have any glycerin drops on hand, but I shaved a tiny piece off of a bar of glycerin soap and it worked well. Glycerin Soap bars are the clear or see-through kind. A little bit goes a long way.

How To Store Your Mud Coffee Playdough

The oil should keep your mud coffee playdough moist. However, you will probably want to keep this in an air tight container.

Not only will it help keep it wet and malleable, but it will help keep other stuff out like lint or hair and the such.

Why We Were So Excited To Learn How To Make Mud

Making mud playdough sounds silly, but it’s so much fun. And my kids had a blast with it. Not to mention it smells good. But the real reason I learned how to make mud was for the imaginative play. If you see above, you see that we used dinosaurs to play in our mud playdough. Kids can stomp around and pretend to be dinosaurs in the mud. But there are other ways to play with mud playdough as well:

  • Farm– Farm animals, fences, etc
  • Bugs– Creepy crawly bugs going through the mud
  • Dishes– Uses plastic toy dishes to make mud pies

There are so many different ways to play with this mud playdough that doubles as a sensory activity and as an imaginative play activity.

Mud-Like Coffee PlayDough

Mud-Like Coffee PlayDough

Play with this fun pretend mud inside your house without the mess! This easy to make mud-like coffee playdough is so fun.

Materials

  • 2 Cups of Flour
  • 1/2 Cup of Coffee Grounds
  • 1 Tablespoon of Instant Coffee (when it wasn’t dark enough)
  • 1 Cup of Salt
  • 2 Teaspoons of Cream of Tartar (she called for more, but this stuff is hard to find, so I cut the amount by a third).
  • 1 Cup of very hot water
  • 2 Tablespoons of oil
  • Glycerin Drops or Clear Glycerin Soap

Instructions

    If you are not using glycerin drops, shave a small amount of glycerin soap base and heat until it is melted. Let it cool to warm before adding.

    Mix flour, cream of tartar, salt, instant coffee, and coffee grounds together in one bowl.

    Add the hot water, the glycerin, and oil in.

    Mix well until you get a pasty consistency.

    Put in a container and add dinosaurs and other toys! Enjoy!

Notes

The oil should keep your mud coffee playdough moist. However, you will probably want to keep this in an air tight container. Not only will it help keep it wet and malleable, but it will help keep other stuff out like lint or hair and the such.

More Playdough Recipes From Kids Activities Blog

Have you made this coffee playdough yet? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!



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36 Comments

  1. I guess here in NC it would be clay day! 🙂 That looks like a lot of fun. I like how you incorporated it with the special day. It’s fun to celebrate those interesting holidays. I like ice cream day! =D Thank you for linking up to Give Back Thursday

  2. Oh my, what fab playdough! it looks fab and is perfect for mud sculptures. Love it! Bet it smells nice too!

    Thank you for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

  3. can i subscribe to email update posts?
    luv your site, great ideas to entertain my 2 yr old granddaughter.
    thank you.
    Lesa

  4. I hear ya! We live in Houston, and the only time we play outside is late in the evening with tons of bug spray. Occasionally Nick convinces me to go sweat to the oldies while he plays outside during the dreadful heat. The only outdoor activity that I’m down with during the summer days, is swimming!

    I love coffee, if you couldn’t tell by my blog name, and this is awesome! I think I’ll save my coffee grinds from yesterday and tomorrow to make this. Nick loves play doh, and so do I.. so how much fun. Plus, it’ll be like a little pick me up if I need it. Do you have anymore awesome play doh recipes? Could you pretty much add anything in place of the coffee? [Well, with similar properties I guess].

    Okay I babbled waaay too long! I get a little excited to see other Texans in blog land. Have a great morning!

  5. This is really cool! My son is looking at this with me and he wants to make it! I just happen to have all of those ingredients, so we’re looking forward to doing this soon!

    Mandi
    boredombustingmommy.blogspot.com

  6. I’m glad I saw this before I clean the coffee pot. I usually dump them in the garden. My son will defininitely enjoy some of this.
    Via Sugar and Dots

  7. Around here, March should be called “mud month.” (Definitely not June!) Anyway, this looks like a fun idea! We’re going to make some biome dioramas soon and this recipe will be great for our forest floor, etc. I might start craving coffee though…

    Thanks for the great idea!