To not know the difference between play doh and plasticine?

[BlamBlamBlam]

Is there one? Is plasticine for older ones? Mine are under five and so far we've just used play doh but should we have plasticine too? Or move on to it when they're older? Or are they just the same thing really?

Can you do anything with plasticine that you can't do with play doh?

Playdoh smells nice than plasticine 😄

Play doh is for younger children and is much softer but goes crumbly if it dries and I think it dries out easier.

Plasticine is much firmer and for older kids. You have to squish it quite a bit to make it malleable so can be harder for smaller hands to use it. I also think it gets stuck more in carpets and things.

I'd give them play doh until they're old enough and their creations are advanced enough to want plasticine.

All I know is play doh dries to crumbs and i can hoover it up!

You can make your own playdoh. It will dry out if you leave it out of the tube for any length of time but plasticine doesn't dry out as quickly and can be resofended by heating slightly in the microwave. If you do that with playdoh you will cook it and it will go hard.

Homemade playdoh is literally, flower, water, oil and salt with some tart source (the power) and food colouring.

I have a plasticine model my granny made for me over 50 years ago.

Play doh comes in tubs. It is much softer and you can use cutter, rollers, turn it into spaghetti strands, add glitter etc etc.

Plasticine comes in solid strips and you have to work away at it to get it soft enough to model stuff.

My kids had play-doh, some bought and some home made, and lots of plastic accessories. They didn't progress onto plasticine because it's just less fun.

Play doh goes hard when left out on your carpets & soft furnishings and can be scraped off.
Plasticine remains pliable and becomes part of your carpets and soft furnishings!

Think of it as the difference between a soft meringue and a toffee. A meringue dissolves quickly in the mouth and is easily cleaned up if trodden into the carpet, the toffee takes a lot of work to be edible and you will never get it out of your cream longpile rug.

Or you could think of the sort of things you can do with them. Play-Do can be easily poked, squished, extruded to look like hair, rolled into tiny little balls, turned into pretend burgers, all by 2 year olds, straight from the tub. Plasticine is most often just about managed to turn into snakes and coiled pots by seven year olds complaining that it's cold and makes their hands hurt. Or turned into little brown figures and animated with stop-frame photography (and if you aren't as old as me, into Wallace and Grommit).
Both have a very distinctive smell, one that's absolutely of childhood, just as Crayola crayons do. And Copydex glue, complete with the experience of pasting it over your hands and then peeling it off in one immensely satisfying piece (vastly superior to Pritt-Stik for that reason alone, IMO).
It's easier to go from Play-Do to making salt dough (if you want to keep something/paint it). Or just let them loose with pastry and some food colouring if you still want to be able to chuck their creations away.

We skipped plasticine, did playdoh then skipped straight to Fino when she was older so we could bake the things she made and make magnets, models, jewellery etc

Thanks all, looks like I'll give plasticine the swerve then!