Benefits of Play Dough Play
Play dough is a great warm up activity before kids start written work. Moulding and rolling play dough helps to stretch and strengthen the fingers, hands and wrists, which is important for handwriting accuracy and endurance. Using the whole hand to squeeze and roll the play dough is great for developing fine motor skills. Poke the play dough with each finger on each hand to further develop these skills. Play dough can be used to practice letter, number and shape formation. Use cutters, or roll the dough into a long sausage, then move the sausage into position. Coloured and scented dough can provide a multi-sensory experience which is wonderful for engaging kids and enhancing learning opportunities.
Different Play Dough Recipes
1. Traditional
2. Stretchy
3. Herbal Tea
Swap the water in the play dough recipe with herbal tea! It smells delicious! You can find more about it over at Childhood101 from Christie. Click here for the details.
4. Glow in the Dark
Super fun idea for a sleepover! Find out how to make glow in the dark play dough from the team at Paging Fun Mums. Click here for the recipe.
5. Essential Oil
A few drops of essential oil can make play dough beautifully fragrant. Ness from One Perfect Day used lemon and eucalyptus for this Aussie classic dough. Click here for the recipe.
6. No Cook
For a no-cook play dough recipe, head over to Deb’s blog, Learn With Play At Home. Click here for the recipe.
More Play Dough Play Ideas
Mix it up and make a play dough kit. Check out this post for ideas: Play Dough Kit Ideas
For more activity ideas, check out these posts:
- Sensory Play Dough Ideas from The Craft Train
- Rice Play Dough from Childhood101
- Play Dough Printing from Childhood 101
- Edible Play Dough from Dana Banya
- Lasts a Long Time Dough from Hinterland Mama
11 Comments
Nicole
June 21, 2014 at 11:57 amGreat post Kelly! I love these play dough ideas – especially the herbal tea one. Haven’t heard of that idea before! I would love to hear how Son goes with a play dough warm up before homework.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 21, 2014 at 12:24 pmHe really struggles with handwriting in general so I’m looking for ways to help him and I think this might really help. Thanks so much!
Nicole
June 21, 2014 at 12:48 pm😀
Rebekah kaminski
August 3, 2014 at 10:04 amI have made the stretchy dough and it is lovely and smooth and soft but in no way is it stretchy. Not at all.
Thanks for the great work.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
August 3, 2014 at 4:27 pmThanks for the feedback Rebekah. Yes, that recipe from Kate seems to get a wide variety of outcomes. How did you find it to make? Easy?
Rebekah
August 3, 2014 at 6:10 pmIt is an easy recipe to make but not as fun as some of the other dough we have made. The only other thing I would say is be careful what conditioner you choose (cheap is fine) because some can have a very strong fragrance and so the smell of dough can be a bit overpowering if you make a bad choice. My kids liked it until they figured out they couldn’t make objects out of it. It was very hard to model but felt nice to play with.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
August 10, 2014 at 12:11 pmExcellent feedback. Thank you.
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Arthur Riley
January 24, 2019 at 8:33 amI’m trying the glow-in-the-dark play dough tonight! Yeah…it’s for my kids…sure…yeah.