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Ingredients:
Plain flour – 2 cups
Vegetable oil – or baby oil/coconut oil – ½ cup
Water (boiling) – 1 – 1.5 cups
Food colouring (optional)
Directions:
- Put 2 cups of flour in a large bowl
- Add half a cup of vegetable oil
- Add half a cup of salt
- Slowly add 1 – 1.5 cups of boiling water in stages until it feels just right!
Now you can add food colouring/glitter/chocolate powder/herbs whatever your heart desires for a more sensory experience.
Benefits of Playdough Play: Not only is playdough a unique sensory experience for children, it has many learning values.
1. Fine Motor Skill Development: great for strengthening muscle tone in little hands – squishing, squashing, rolling, flattening play dough all develop children’s muscles and encourage prewriting and other skills such as cutting, using tweezers and holding a pencil.
2. Calming and therapeutic: simply sitting and squashing and rolling a piece of playdough in your hand is a very calming and soothing activity, it’s a way of easing tension, releasing extra energy, improving focus and concentration. Can be a great outlet for children to express their emotions!
3. Creativity and imagination: the possibilities for playdough play are limitless –At Leapfrog we like to provide them with a wide variety of materials to use with the playdough, inspiring creativity and encouraging use of their imaginations.
4. Develops hand-eye co-ordination: by using a variety of materials and objects in playdough play can enhance hand-eye co-ordination.
5. Social skills: any activity where children are hands-on involved creates a fantastic opportunity for developing social skills. Playing with play dough in small groups and or with adults presents lots of possibilities for talk and discussion, playing collaboratively, problem solving and planning with others. At Leapfrog we encourage children to describe what they are doing while they play.
6. Literacy and Numeracy development: we have used playdough for a variety of literacy and numeracy activities
7. Promotes Play: allows children to be children, to slow down and play, using a range of their senses and skills.
