homemade play dough

This morning M and I made a batch of homemade play dough.  I hadn't made homemade play dough since I was little but I think it came out pretty well.  There are a few different recipes for it but the one we used was:
1/4 cup of salt
1 cup of flour
1/4 cup of water
Mix the salt and flour then add water and knead to form the dough.  We probably ended up using an additional 1/8 cup of water to get the consistency we wanted.  I split the dough in half and added 1 drop of blue and green food coloring.  I did the mixing but I think this is something M will really enjoy doing at 2 or 3.
M's favorite toys are baseballs, footballs, beach balls, rubber balls, etc. so I formed a blue and green ball for him to start with and he jumped right in.  We flattened them out like pancakes and rolled out the dough like snakes.  I attempted to make a few animals and we practiced our animal sounds (currently he has sheep, cow, and monkey down).  One of his favorite things was picking up the little dough balls (marble size) I was making and squishing them between his thumb and finger.  We also tried some cookie cutters:

M liked pushing the cookie cutters into the dough.  Our favorites were the stars:

M's table and chairs are near his play kitchen so we also used some of the kitchen toys with the play dough (his idea).  He liked stabbing the dough with the fork.  He also liked putting a bunch in a bowl and stirring it.  I showed him how to cut with the play knife.  This is M stirring:

If I remember correctly the homemade play dough doesn't last that long before it hardens up.  I wrapped ours in saran wrap when we were finished to try to preserve it but it's so easy to make that it doesn't really matter.  I also put out a white tray to play with the play dough on because I wasn't sure what it would do to M's wood table.  At a few points we were rolling the play dough right on the table and it did nothing.  The homemade variety seems less greasy than the store-bought kind.  I had thought about trying play dough with M before and decided not to because I thought he might be too young (currently 13 months) but he really enjoyed it and did a lot with it.  I also loved that he thought to use the kitchen toys all on his own (I should have thought of that!).