Playdough is so much fun! There are so many ways to play with it and so many learning opportunities. My favourite playdough tasks are the open ended variety and letting children decide what they will do, how they will play and where it will go.
It all started with ...
our plain white play dough left over from our nature dough play.
I spilt the dough into 4 and added a pipette (eye dropper) of food colouring to each plate for Miss M to colour her own playdough!
Squeezing in the colour...
Kneading it through!
Be prepared for coloured hands! It does wash off.
Adding the colour and kneading it through was a very tough fine and gross motor workout, strenghing muscles in the hands, arms and sholders!
This was enough play with playdough for one day Miss M decided!
The next day she wanted to play again and I decided to get out some glitter for her to add!
Her play quickly turned to making ice creams! Ice creams and cakes are her favourite things to make with play dough. Surprisingly they are also her favourite food.
So I got out some scents to add to the dough also, we used peppermint essence, lavender oil, and vanilla essence. Just a few drops of each to one of the colours each.
We made some cones from 1/2 circle paper rolled up and tape.
Cut up some egg cartons to make sundae cups!
Busy hands,
working hard!
I added some pom poms and patty cases but as you can see they were hardly touched.
Needless to say ,I couldnt possibly pretend eat another icecream for a week!
Yummy
After all this ice cream making, it was time for a story!
This is a great one for memory and oral language that I have used in my classroom with children aged 4-6.
It, ah, turned out a little differently with an almost 3yr old but was still fun.
For the story you will need,
a felt ice cream cone
some felt circles in various colours
(in a PP class with 24 student aged 5-6 I do this with half a class at a time (otherwise there is just too many flavours to think off- just choose enough to suit the ability of your child)
A felt board or on the floor is also fine
We used a blanket on the floor today.
The story goes,
One very hot day (child's name) wanted some ice cream. She/he went to an ice cream shop and said to the person
"may I please have some ice cream" (encourage child to say this part)
"Yes, here try this flavour" (Get child to chose a coloured circle and decide what flavour it will be)
(Child's name) took a lick.
"mmm I like ________ flavour but it's not my favourite" (encourage child to say this part)
Here try this flavour- and keep getting the children to add flavours.
So it will start for example "I like strawberry flavour, but it's not my favourite" then it might be 'banana, strawberry' 'spearmint, banana, strawberry' 'chocolate, spearmint, banana, strawberry' so on
We got this far into the story and that was it. Miss M insisted this WAS her favourite flavour and she didnt want anymore lol! Also this was very creativly named "pink and green flavoured icecream" haha but that is her age and ability speaking. To be honest she's only ever had vanilla or 'pink' icecream in real life. We have talked about different flavours in her playdough play and her icecream shop but she hasnt experienced them- why change a good thing hey!
This is what it looks like with more flavours! It looks pretty impressive with 10+ flavours.
If your after a simple play dough recipe here is a video tutorial from Kate at laughing kids learn. This is the exact recipe I use and have used for years in my classroom.
Looking for more play dough fun? Check out this link from Deb at Learn with Play at Home!
Happy Playing,
Enjoy
Katey
I love the cumulative story.
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