Playdough colour mixing and fun ideas

23 Aug

Playing with playdough is incredibly relaxing even for adults! Making the playdough for our video was just that and more. The urge was there to mix the yellow ball of playdough with the blue ball but that was for the children in the video to do. If you would like to see what the children did, watch the video below.

Making playdough is very easy. You can easily involve your children for most of the process. They can be part of the measuring and mixing. In our recipe, the boiling water does make the mixture hot so we would advise that this is not touched by anyone. But it doesn’t take long to cool. Once cooled and partially mixed, everyone should get involved with the kneading of the dough.

The video shows very clearly the effort and hard work that the children did by using their fingers, hands and even elbows! Our video is only a few minutes long but our footage of the children working with the playdough lasted longer than an hour. An hour of working finger and hand muscles is perfect for fine motor development.

Maths crept into the learning when the two balls were halved and then shared. Estimates of how much dough was needed for each part of the creations was another. The children chatted throughout their play with Mr Three often repeating what Miss Five said. Both were learning how to express themselves verbally and Mr Three was adding new words to his vocabulary.

The children watched each other a lot. Mr Three copied many of Miss Five’s ideas and a few times she did the same with his ideas. It was lovely to see this exchange. Creativity was huge during this play with first creating using hands and then creating differently when toys and loose parts were added. We extended creativity. We wanted to show that playdough does not have to be set up always with cookie cutters and kitchen play equipment. There are other things that go well with this play. As long as you are happy for the items to go into the playdough, why not give it a go?

Watching the two colours gradually combine was pretty spectacular to watch. The children were excited to see the different colours evolve as they squeezed and squeezed the two colours together. We don’t think Miss Five and Mr Three will easily forget the day they mixed yellow playdough with blue playdough and turned it into green. When children do, they learn. When children feel joy, they learn.

Years of working with young children has shown us that playdough is often the “go-to” activity for early mornings for young children in their education settings. There is a reason for this. It is soothing and relaxing to squeeze, roll and knead the playdough. It is easy to create and it is open-ended play. What a wonderful way to relax during the day! Give it a go!