Preschool Activities: New Ways to Play with Play Dough

by Deborah Pace Rowley

This is my favorite homemade play dough recipe. A friend gave it to me when my oldest daughter was 3 years old and I have used it for over 15 years. It will last in a Ziploc bag for almost a month.

2 cups water

3 Tablespoons vegetable oil

7 or 8 drops of food coloring

2 ½ cups flour

½ cup salt

1 Tablespoon Alum

Boil water and add oil and food coloring. Remove from the heat. Stir in the dry ingredients. Mix well and knead until soft. Add more flour if the clay is too sticky.

Once you have made the clay, what do you do with it? My children usually spent only about 5 minutes playing with the fancy Play dough sets that you can buy in the store. They were much happier dragging out all my kitchen utensils and testing them out. My garlic press and pizza cutter were especially fun. Two other activities that were big hits at my house were “Snowman” and “Favorites”.

How to Play SNOWMAN:

To play snowman, you simply sing the “Once There Was a Snowman” song while building a clay snowman. You quickly create and stack three balls, one on top of each other. The best part comes when the snowman in the song melts. This is when my preschoolers would use their fist to smash the clay snowman smaller and smaller and smaller, until he was as flat as a pancake. Then we would start all over again.

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman,

Once there was a snowman, tall, tall, tall.

In the sun he melted, melted, melted,

In the sun he melted, small, small, small.

How to Play FAVORITES:

To play favorites, ask your child to sculpt his favorite item in a specific category. For example: Make me your favorite food. The child would then use the clay to make a pizza, a cookie, a doughnut, spaghetti noodles or some other favorite food. Other categories include:

Your favorite animal

Your favorite toy

Your favorite cartoon

Your favorite movie

Your favorite book

Your favorite thing outside

Your favorite thing in your room

Your favorite thing at Grandma’s house

When your child is finished, ask him or her to tell you about his clay creation. Nothing is worse than guessing wrong in these situations! It is amazing to see what kids will come up with in the category of a favorite movie or favorite book.  Happy Sculpting!

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