Playing with playdough is a classic childhood favourite activity that has been around for many, many years. Not only does it provide hours of fun, it also provides a wonderful sensory experience that helps develop fine motor skills, aids in improving imagination and helps ease tension. There are so many good reasons to use playdough as part of learning in early childhood, and with this huge list of playdough mats with playdough recipes, your kids will have an amazing time learning about animals, and more while working on their fine motor skills.
Develop Fine Motor Skills
By rolling, squishing, flattening, and moulding playdough into lots of fun creations, creating are building up strength in their hand and finger muscles.
Developing good muscles is an important step that helps with holding a pencil and using scissors.
Encourages Creativity
Give your child some playdough and show them how to stretch, roll and flatten it. Then, let them experiment with it. This encourages them to be creative from the start. It helps to stretch their imagination and build some amazing creations.
Hand-Eye Co-Ordination
Supplying a variety of tools such as different sized and shaped cookie cutters, plastic toys, rolling pins, and scissors all help increase learning and hand-eye co-ordination.
Other manipulatives ideas include:
- Sticks and pebbles
- Coloured counters
- Cookie Cutters
- Plastic cutlery
- Plastic toys
- Rolling pins
- Scissors
- Lids
- Shells
- Wooden blocks
- Buttons
- Ribbon / fabric
- Straws
- Leaves / flowers
- Pipe cleaners
Relaxation
Playing with playdough is relaxing and calming. It is a great activity for children who need are feeling stressed out and need to release excess energy. While they are calming down, they will also be working on improving their focus while they manipulate the playdough.
Educational Skills
As they are creating, they are learning words that related to playdough and how to use it such as stretch, roll, and flatten.
When using playdough with playdough mats such as the ones below, they will be learning to read the letters and numbers on the mats as well as the shape when they shape them out of the playdough.
Math and science skills are also used when they explore measuring, mixing and experimenting with the playdough, creating different shapes, colours and textures.
Playdough Recipes
There are so many different playdough recipes out there. Here are some of our favourite ones.
Onto the Huge List of Playdough Mats!
To grab your copy of the playdough mats, just click on the picture below.
Homemade Sleep Salve