Hellobee

Do your children enjoy using play dough? Mine have gone through stages. My youngest son is currently loving play dough and I often present it with different materials to keep him interested. Since reading about color therapy, I make sure we have play dough in a variety of colors. Often we scent our play dough with essential oils. Play dough has become really important in our home especially on sick days or when we have consecutive rainy days! Here are four ways we are currently enjoying play dough.

1. Alphabet Stamps. This is a great way to incorporate early literacy into play. You can begin with giving your child the letter from their name or stamping our their name and see if they can copy!

2. Other Stamps. Stamps work surprisingly well in play dough. Teach the child to roll out the play dough and press lightly with the stamp. Above we have hand carved fabric stamps but our simple Melissa and Doug stamps work well too.

3. Nature Play. I love combining natural materials with play dough. Above we have used a variety of gum nuts and sticks. Feathers, shells, leaves and pinecones can also lead to creative play. Children can make gum nut people, buildings or little scenes.

4. Galaxy Dough. This is one of our all-time favorites! It’s simply black dough (or you can add other dark colors like dark blue or purple) with lots of glitter mixed through. It ends up all dark and sparkly – just like the galaxy. It looks and feels a little different to our other play dough. To add a space theme we often use star and rocket shaped cookie cutters with it.

I always present the play dough in jars or containers that my children can independently open and on wooden trays to contain the mess. I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into our play dough play!