Good morning everyone
We hope you all had a good weekend. Some new idea’s to try at home………
Playdough
Why not get your child involved in helping to make playdough, it’s a firm favourite at nursery. L.1. Through creative play, I explore different materials and can share my reasoning for selecting materials for different purposes. For an easy non-cook recipe please click here.
The Benefits of Playdough
Fine motor development:
The properties of play dough make it fun for investigation and exploration as well as secretly building up strength in all the tiny hand muscles and tendons, making them ready for pencil and scissor control later on.
As part of simple, tactile play it can be squashed, squeezed, rolled, flattened, chopped, cut, scored, raked, punctured, poked and shredded! Each one of these different actions aids fine motor development in a different way, not to mention hand-eye co-ordination and general concentration.
Having a wide range of additional extras to use while playing extends the investigation and play possibilities endlessly. Poking in sticks provides a challenge and a new physical skill.
Squeezing through a garlic press leads to wonder and amazement at seeing it change shape, as well as using a gross motor movement to accomplish it.
Sticking in spaghetti requires a delicate hand and can lead to threading and stacking pasta shapes or beads over the top.
Providing boxes and containers with various shaped compartments can lead to cooking play, sorting, matching, ordering and counting, all naturally and without pressure to learn.
By providing objects from nature with a wide range of textures, colours and shapes, children can have multi-sensory experiences and engage with the world around them in a whole new way.
List of additional extras needed to create a play dough free play kit!
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but all of these elements can be used to create plenty of exciting, open-ended play times:
toy creatures
straws
rolling pins, plastic knives, scissors, pizza cutters
cupcake cases in different sizes
coloured and natural feathers
pine cones, sticks, bark, leaves
muffin tins, egg cartons, chocolate boxes,
small cups and shot glasses
alphabet, number and shape cookie cutters
pasta shapes
shells
buttons
glass pebbles
toy vehicles
wooden letters and numbers
fabric, netting and ribbons
match sticks and lolly sticks
Have fun!
