10 ways to learn using Play dough

This blog post is 100% inspired by Emilia. Of all the activities I prepare for her, anything involving play dough is always going to be a big hit.

As well as being fun, play dough is incredibly beneficial for children to play with. Firstly, it can help improve and build hand muscle strength and fine motor skills. This is essential in life to learn everyday skills like self dressing and writing. Secondly, it is a calming activity than can act as a stress buster. Children can work out their stresses through their hands and it can relieve tension.

I tend to use a mixture of different play doughs in my activities from the original Playdoh brand, cheaper alternatives and also homemade. I’m constantly buying and making different colours which helps keep the play fresh.

My favourite recipe for homemade is – 2 cup plain flour, 1/4 cup salt, sachet of cream of tartare, 1 – 1 1/4cups boiling water, 2 tbsp of oil and gel food colouring. I mix it on the hob on a low heat and keep mixing until it comes into a ball. Then I remove and knead and add any glitter or sprinkles if doing so. I wrap in cling film and it keeps for a good while.

So emptying out the play dough and cutters onto the table will definitely entertain the kids but here are 10 more ways to use play dough to aid learning in a fun and engaging way.

1. CUPCAKES AND CANDLES: Write numbers into cupcake cases and encourage children to count out the right amount of candles to match. You could use beads for sprinkles too. This is always a popular activity and the bonus is it only two minutes to prepare. It will entertain for a while especially if you have a play kitchen to ‘bake’ them in or even do the ‘washing up’ too.

2. THEMED PLAY TRAY: This is a great independent play activity because the children can explore and create what they like. One of Emilia’s favourite themes was the ‘Frozen’ one. I set this up with homemade glitter play dough.

3. HAIRSTYLES AND HAIRCUTS: This a funny activity that will get the children giggling. We used different faces to design hairstyles for and then gave them haircuts. This is a fun way to practise fine motor and cutting skills.

4. MONSTER CREATIONS: This is a simple dice game that encourages counting and number matching to create funny monsters using play dough as the base. You could simplify for little ones by excluding the dice and just build funny monsters.

5. NUMBER MARBLE RUN: This is such an easy activity to create but great for numbers, shapes, letters or just patterns. Good for developing gross motor skills and formation of numbers.

6. 3D CONSTRUCTION: This is one for the older children but it’s brilliant for fine motor skills even before they are ready to name 3D shapes. You can use a range of things with the play dough to form the shapes – pipe cleaners, lolly sticks, straws. Or you could provide a range for them to explore.

7. PLAY DOUGH PUZZLES: This is a quick way to reinvent an old puzzle or create your own with well loves toys. Lay out different colours of play dough and press in shapes and get the children to match them up. This can be adapted for animals, letters, numbers, shapes so easy to adapt for different ages.

8. SHAPE SMASH: This is a really quick game to play and is a great stress reliever! Great fun for practising colours, shapes, letters, numbers, sight words or even times tables for the older kids. I just simply call out the shape names and Emilia hits the correct answer. We always swap over so she can be the teacher too.

9. MAKING MEALS AND MENUS: As we all know, play dough is great to make pretend food. I tend to put colours out and then Emilia invents a menu including quantities to develop counting and number recognition. We then make it and all the rolling, squashing and pinching helps develop hand muscles. Adding a knife and fork is a good way to allow children to practise cutlery skills too.

10. WORD PRINTING: Play dough is the perfect media to make letter impressions. Matching letters to form simple words is a good way to introduce letter recognition. This is also an activity that can make practising spellings more engaging for reluctant writers.