One way to thwart a tired toddler's meltdown

Homemade play-dough! I was surprised to learn how easy it was to make the dough. We used a no-bake recipe. Evelyn thought this was great fun until the dough hardened in little bits on her arms and I began to wipe them off with a damp cloth. She shouted "it hurts!" and I felt awful. We ended up making a game out of the clean up and I used the "rip off the band-aid" method to clean her up-- I just went for it as quickly as I could to get it over with. In the end, the play-dough was a lot of fun and it did cheer her up.