Nannies Created: Playdough

Showing posts with label Playdough. Show all posts

Play dough Currant buns in a bakers shop

A favourite song at the moment with my 3year olds in 5 currant buns in a bakers shop, I then used that as our theme for another Play dough activity.
First I made 4 fresh batches of play dough with the children each with different colours of their choice and we added some essences to each colour dough as well for a added sensory experience.
Both the of the children were very keen to get creative with their new doughs and took their colours off to the table to play they both used the pots I Intended to store the dough in and pushed a circle print into the dough with it, this created our buns. I then gave then some new beads which we used as currants.
We sang the song together and acted it out too with our "currant buns" passing them to each other and taking turns with buying them as well.

The beads were a great addition to the Play dough as they allow the children to use every small movements to hold them, pick them up and push them in and out of the dough so if great for developing those pincer movements needed for writing.

"Mr play-dough head"

Here we used textured Play dough made with lentils and oats mixed into our no cook dough along with some "Mr Potato heads" features to to make our own "mr play-dough heads"

Playdough birthday cakes with number candles

This activity was created by following the child's lead. I originally set up some home-made Playdough with some plastic knifes and forks to allow the child to simply explore the dough.

Whilst exploring the Playdough we used our imaginations to create different things e.g. rolling sausages then cutting them, making round biscuits and even a ice cream or two. So I thought about how to extend this to make the imagination go that bit further and added some cake cases.
Before you knew it we were filling all the cases with balls or Playdough and creating "cakes" and singing "happy birthday to you".
This is when I remembered I had some number shaped candles lurking about in one of the kitchen draws, so I quickly ran to get them and pressed them into the "birthday cakes" and said the correct number as I did.

"Mr 2yrs" soon recognised I was using numbers and tried to copy and name the numbers himself, he then continues to make more cakes and sing as loud as he could, once the song finished he would point to the numbers and try to work out which was which number - he did need correcting but soon discovered that if he pointed to the same one then he would be right by saying "umm 6"

A great visual activities for early numbers.

Mash Potato Dough

We used -

* 1 bag of Instant Mash Potato Flakes

* approximately 1/2cup of cold water

* few drops of Pink Liquid Food colouring

Pour the Potato flakes into a bowl and slowly add the water a few spoons at a time. Use your hand to slowly mix them together, gradually adding more water and as much food colouring as you require until a dough has formed. Once a dough has formed turn out onto a work surface/table and knead together.

The dough will be sticky but formed enough to work with and create shapes with cutters.

Fine motor skill development and Playdough

Playdough is a good way to develop those fine motor skills that children need to start on the road to write and gain pen control. Here we used cotton reels and spaghetti strands, the cotton reels become very versatile as they were used as mini rollers and also a printing tool.
I then observed the children using the spaghetti strands to carefully thread through the cotton reels, creating another unexpected fine motor activity themselves.