We all know play dough is extremely popular with young Children. It not only keeps children entertained with lots of fun mess it also has a lot of benefits for young children.
At Little Darlings play dough is a big part of our curriculum.
Some of the benefits include:
• FINE MOTOR MUSCLES
As the children are manipulating the play dough, they are also building and strengthening their muscles and tendons. This assists with eye hand coordination and finger dexterity that is necessary for scissor control and pencil grip.
Play dough can be: poked, squashed, pulled, rolled, cut, the list goes on.
All of these actions assist greatly with their fine motor abilities and co ordination.
• CREATIVITY AND IMAGINTION
Play Dough is the perfect tool to stimulate children’s creative play! The concepts of play dough are endless as is a child’s imagination
• SOOTHING EFFECT
Play dough can be really effective in assisting children to release stress, by squashing and manipulating the dough.
Using play dough together with music and language experiences can be a great way to assist children with expressing their emotions and releasing any tension.
• NUMBERS AND SHAPES
Children can practice their letters and numbers by forming various letters of the alphabet, spelling out their name, forming shapes, comparing lengths, sizes and expanding their counting abilities.
• SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY
Making the play dough with the children can lead to various questions and predictions by the children. As the children watch the matter of flour and water change to squashy dough, it teaches them about the concept of physics.
Measuring the ingredients to make the play dough builds mathematical concepts of quantities, numbers etc
• EXPRESSIVE AND RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE
While children are playing with play dough they are using receptive skills by watching their peers play. Expressive language is used as they manipulate the dough and communicate what they are making. The dialogue that occurs during play dough play can be very creative as well as build sentence structure and vocabulary.
So finally you can see that play dough can be a fun activity to share with your child, with lots of educational benefits.
You can make it at home, here is an easy receipe for you to use!
PLAY DOUGH RECEIPE NO COOKING
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/4 salt
a few drops of food colouring
1/2 cup water
Cooking Process:
mix flour and salt
make a well and add oil
mix dye into water and slowly mix into flour
knead to form a dough
