My Senses Playdough

For our on going experiment for My Senses week in the Preschool At Home program, we are going to be making play dough to use all week. I suggest making your own play dough (which is easy and relatively cost efficient), but I have ways listed below to tweak play dough you already have. You can choose one sense to focus on all week, or try a few, or all of them. Small children typically are obsessed with play dough, so if your little one just wants to do regular play dough play, that's totally fine- and fitting as it definitely checks off the touch sense.

Play Dough Sense- Smell

Play dough naturally has a smell. That may be as far as you'd like to go, but why not make it more fragrant? You can do this by adding a few drops of essential oil to your play dough, or any herb or spice. Obviously cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice is a great one for this time of year. Cocoa powder could work too- anything you have in your spice drawer will do! Give your child a roller and safe cookie cutter, and they can use the fragrance to pretend they are making cookies!

Play Dough Sense- Touch

Recently we made a sand play dough for our August Ocean's Theme, and it was a big hit! You pretty much can do a regular play dough recipe and just add sand (or just add sand to regular play dough). It definitely gives it a different sensory experience. Additionally you could add rocks or shells to the play to add to the sense of touch. Or maybe nix the sand and bring your play dough to your mud kitchen area. Let your child add whatever they like to expand their sense of touch and to see how the play dough changes with different outdoor items.

Play Dough Sense- Sound

Help your child roll balls and "worms" with their play dough. This is a great fine motor skill. Place a small amount of that back into the jar and shake! Listen to how it changes as it mushes together. You could also encourage them to wrap the dough around various objects that would make more sound in the jar, and experiment with how the play dough changes the sound.

Play Dough Sense- Sight

Use this as an excuse to practice color mixing. Pick two different colors of play dough, and let your child mix them together. Can you add a third or fourth color to the mix? Try breaking the two color combo in 3 pieces- 1 to mix with a larger amount of the new color, 1 to mix with a smaller amount of the new color, and one to leave to remember what the original color was. This is such a great way to see how colors mix. When doing this, I try to make sure we use colors that will mix well together, or you're just left with browns and greys. You could also add some plastic free glitter to take it to the next level.

Play Dough Sense- Taste

While we don't want to encourage eating store bought play dough, most home made play dough is actually safe to eat. I save a LOT of money making play dough, and don't feel as guilty about throwing it out after someone had a cold (which is every week 1/2 the year) (imagine all the germs growing in that dark, damp container, room temperature.. yikes). Find a play dough recipe you love, and let your child taste a bit. If it's not one meant for eating, make sure to let them know that we aren't really supposed to eat play dough, we're just exploring our senses and can try a teeny bit this one time. If you have a 1-2 year old who has trouble keeping things out of their mouth, maybe you skip this one for now.