The resources we add to playdough have changed alot in the last few months. Credit for this has to be attributed toAnna at The Imagination Tree. She has some really fantastic and inspiring play dough ideas and her blog is definitely worth a look.
The children’s interest in making playdough cakes last week was still going strong, so I had to look for ways to extend their learning and interest this week. They were just getting the hang of decorating their cakes, so I decided to add some more resources to build on their emerging skills.. My problem with this though was that I currently look after two very little ones, who are still at the stage of exploring with their mouths. Consequently, if I introduced small objects to the playdough table, I was going to have to watch them like hawk…..unless of course, if the resources I introduced were edible! So I search the cake-making aisle of Asda for suitable decorations. These proved to be more expensive than I expected, so we were limited to those within budget. Okay, so you are probably thinking now, ‘if I did this the children would eat them all’. This had crossed my mind, so I decided to be a bit sneaky and tell them they weren’t edible if they asked. Which of course they did! Luckily they accepted my answer that they were just for play:)
I also added a couple of herbs for the children to practice their scissor skills on, as this had been a popular element of play last week.
These were well and truly snipped and did look a bit worse for wear by the end of the week, but hey their scissor skills are coming on in leaps and bounds!
This little one is still using both hands to operate the scissors. Playdough activities will help him to strengthen the muscles in his arms and fingers in preparation for using the scissors with just one hand.
The children incorporated the additional resources into their play and created some delicious looking cakes!
They were very focused during their play and seemed to consider carefully where they wanted each decoration to go.
I love the fact they didn’t restrict themselves to laying the resources flat on their cakes.
What I failed to foresee was that the salt in the dough would break down the coating on the decorations. Consequently they were rather sticky by the end of the day, so I had to get rid of their creations each evening. Luckily they didn’t seem to notice and were happy to make more the following day.
The small bead like decorations were great for developing a pincer grip and hand eye coordination (hmmm maybe not the hand-eye coordination in this photo!)
J is not practically an expert at cake making! Roll (with a bit of support)….
…cut with the cutter and decorate….
Carefully lift and put into the baking tray, don’t squeeze too tight though!
Here’s what we used to decorate our cakes; buttons, sequins, mini chocolate beans, gold and silver edible beads, straws, chives and thyme (or was it rosemary).
The playdough recipe we used is available on the recipe page of this blog.
