Play Dough- 10 Play and Learn Ideas

I introduced Little A to play dough as soon as he turned two because I always feared he would put things in his mouth which were harmful for him. Six months past and playing with dough has become one of our favorite activities during the day. I initially bought him store bought clay which of course wasn’t very bad but there came a period when we had no play dough in the house for few days and Little A kept asking for it every now and then. I’d always tell him (and myself) we’ll buy when we go to a mall and that kept delaying. Then, one day out of desperation I thought of making it at home since he insisted in playing with clay so much. I had tried making play dough at home earlier too but they always turned out dry and cracked after a point or if i had to cook them on the stovetop, they’d turn soft and mushy after a while. This time around, after lot of looking-up on the internet I went ahead with Katie Stile’s you-tube video recipe which turned out perfect for us. Though the recipe didn’t call for cream of tartar I used it to be extra cautious since it doesn’t make the dough flaky and make it last longer. It was quick. It hardly took any time since I had all the ingredients in my kitchen and we started playing with it immediately. It was also fun making a play dough since Little A helped too in mixing the dough. It was his first hands-on experience in making his own play dough! To be really honest, we also sometime tend to go and buy from the shop when we are feeling utterly lazy to make one at home though it can be ready in no time!

Play dough is so versatile, has so much potential and has almost become the crucial part of our daily lives! And we love it. I have come to know that it is such an open-ended play material Little A is never tried of and it never fails to engage his imagination. We use play dough in lot of activities including ways to build, create, play and learn simultaneously. The best way, in my experience,  is to hand the play dough to a child, sit back and observe what they do with it. I, later join Little A and help him if he is stuck somewhere or need a helping hand. It never gets boring for us – mainly because we are always finding new and simple uses to a play dough. The bummer part in the whole activity is cleaning up. I’d find tiny pieces of play dough stuck on the carpet, under the sofa, or all around the house; so in the pursuit to make our play activities more pleasant we now spread out a disposable plastic sheet to sit and play on it. It is effortless and Little A wraps it by himself and throws away in the bin after we wind up.

There is so much one can do with a play dough. Here is the list of some of the activities we engage in, some that we found on the web and some that we created on our own -

1. Learning about shapes – check out the post I did a couple of months ago on the blog.

2. Sticking pastas in the play dough

3. Sorting colors

4. The bakery shop

5. Building characters

6. Food plate

7. Fruits

8. Creating structures with toothpicks

9. Counting numbers

10. Mosaic Art

For what activities is a play dough put to use in your house? I am also loving Sand In My Toes‘s idea of creating an underwater theme which we are sure to try out very soon!