Playdough! Creating Sensory Experiences in the Classroom

I love using playdough in the classroom - it's perhaps the most versatile of all the hands-on resources you can have in your bag of teacher tricks! As well as being a familiar and fun element of learning activities it's also a must-have for fine motor development - and with a few tweaks you can create some amazing sensory experiences for your kidlets to further engage and motivate them. Today I've stopped in to share a few of my favourite ideas with you.

Making your own playdough is easy and much, much cheaper than store bought. My go-to recipe has never failed me and best of all - you don't have to cook it!  Here's how it's done:

1. Mix 2 cups plain flour, 1/2 cup salt, 2 tablespoons cream of tartar and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a large bowl.

2. Add food colouring of your choice to 1.5 cups of boiling water. Add this to the flour mixture and stir well.

3. When the mixture forms a dough, turn it out onto a floured board and knead until smooth.  (Be careful - it might still be hot!) 

4. Store in cling wrap in the fridge when not in use.

Now that you've whipped up a batch of basic dough it's time to get creative with scents and textures!  This list of ideas is by no means complete - as you experiment you'll find that the options for sensory dough are endless.  Try these to start:

*Lavender Dough - add a few drops of essential oil to some purple dough.  Perfect to place as an option in your 'Calm Down Corner' for kidlets who may need time to settle themselves, or to play with first up in the morning during the beginning of the year when children may find it stressful to separate from their parents.  You can also add lavender flowers for some texture if you have some in your garden. (If you don't like lavender just use any essential oil!)

*Sand Dough - sprinkle some clean sand into your dough as you're stirring the ingredients together.  You may find you need a little extra oil with this recipe.  Don't add food colouring to this batch to make it look more like sand.  Lots of fun to use along with a beach theme - provide shells and coral for kidlets to press into the dough.  Use some coconut essence or oil for a real tropical island experience!

*Mud Dough - I use coffee in this recipe!  Stir some into the boiling water for a rich brown colour.  Coffee grounds kneaded through the mixture add a dirt-like texture.  Provide plastic bugs, sticks/leaves or pebbles for children to explore with.  Make a few batches and add them to a tray outside - kidlets will love digging around in it with construction toys!

*Spring Dough - add rosewater (or another floral essential oil) to some pastel coloured dough.  Have kidlets collect leaves and flowers from the garden (or bring them from home) to use when playing with this dough.

*Chocolate Dough - replace about half a cup of the flour with cocoa powder.  You can use more if you like but I find the chocolate smell becomes too strong.  Perfect to use during an Easter or Valentine's Day theme, or with cupcake liners.  Kidlets will love to decorate their creations with cake sprinkles! Be warned - no matter how many times you explain that it's not food, someone will always eat the chocolate dough.  :)

*Candy Cane Dough - this one is my absolute favourite! Make 2 batches of dough and dye them Christmas colours.  Add peppermint essence.  Whenever we use these Christmas themed playdough mats I always bust out the candy cane dough!

*Fairy Dough/Magic Dough - add fine glitter to dough of any colour.  Girls particularly love pink dough! They will spend hours with the fairy dough, especially if they have a selection of beads, crystals and sparkly things to add to their creations.

*Fruit Dough - steep some herbal tea bags in the boiling water before adding it to the mixture.  Dye the dough the best colour to match your scent - yellow for lemon etc.

*Jelly Dough - dissolve a packet of jelly crystals in the boiling water before adding it to the mixture.  This is your scent and colour all in one!  Make multiple batches to use in a pretend play ice-cream store.  (See below!)

A word of warning: If you have any children who find strong scents overwhelming you will need to use scented dough carefully - I find that the essential oils can be particularly strong if you're too heavy handed.

Obviously you could just provide the dough as an option for kidlets to use during free play time, however we all know that there's less and less time for that in our little learners' school days. :(  Luckily it's easy to use play dough into a meaningful learning activity.

Playdough mats are a staple in my maths and literacy small groups, particularly at the beginning of the year.  Perfect to work on letter and number recognition and counting skills.  Click on the images below to see the ones in my store if you don't already have some of your own!

Alphabet Mats

Numbers 1-10 Mats

Grab some alphabet cutters to use playdough in a sight word or phonics task.  

The options for using playdough in a pretend play setting are pretty much endless!  Create a cafe, restaurant, bakery or ice-cream store with a few bits and pieces from the kitchen and a few batches of dough!

I hope I've sparked your imagination and inspired you to use scented or textured playdough in your own classroom!

Photo Catch Up! (Five for Friday)

It's seems like it's been such a long time since I stopped by to share photos of what we've been up to in our classroom! This week I did a much better job of snapping pics, so this post will be a hodgepodge catch up of all the fun we've had in the past week or so.  I'm linking up with Five for Friday, too! :)

Term 2 means getting serious about handwriting. We've been focusing on the correct formation of letters - but that doesn't mean that we're stuck at our desks with pencils and paper!

Chalk on the concrete in the sunshine was a very happy way to spend one of our lessons...

...and shaving cream handwriting is always a favourite.  

We got up and moving with beach ball sight words - kidlets simply throw the ball to each other and then read a word on the panel they can see when they catch it.  I just have 4 beach balls with each term's words written on in marker and choose the set of words most needed for each group.

The sight word stars I made for our library have been a hit.  Kidlets choose a star and use it to search for that word as they are reading.

Phonics review this week was hide & seek sorting!  I hid picture cards around the room for kidlets to find.  We met back at the carpet and took turns to sort our cards into the appropriate beginning sound hoop.

I saw this pin a few weeks ago and adapted the idea a little to use with this igloo tent I've got.  When our phonics focus was /i/ we played "What's inside the igloo?".

I collected a box of things from around the room and gave this rhyme as a clue:

"What's inside the igloo? What could be in it for me? It starts with ___ and rhymes with ___. Oh what do you think it could be?"

This game was a HUGE hit! We played it all week and kidlets were always excited to make a guess and check inside the igloo to see if they were correct.

The igloo also became a coveted 'book nook' during reading time. :)

Number line work has been all about caterpillars! We played Counting Caterpillars on the interactive whiteboard and used Mel's Caterpillar Number cut & paste worksheets to order numbers.  Both the game and worksheets can be easily differentiated - perfect for group work!

Our science work has been all about 'The Seasons' and for the past few weeks we've been thinking about Summer! (I know, I know... the igloo doesn't fit with that. Have I ever told you I'm not good with themes?)

We used this poem as our shared reading text - you can see the marker and stickers that we used on various days to highlight capital letters and the /s/ and /m/ sounds.  This was also added to our poetry journals.

Stef's For All Seasons Bunting came in handy for this topic, too.  We've done the Summer flag so far and they turned out beautifully.

This was mine! :)

I love these colourful paper plate suns - they were so easy to make.  We sponge painted the plates with yellow and orange paint, and then glued paper strips in a loop to the outside when they were dry.

During outside time we turned the sandpit into a beach with an umbrella and beach chairs.  We also had the buckets and spades for sandcastle making, the fishing boat and music playing.

The playdough ice-cream cafe was open again this year.  We had four flavours, cones, cups and sprinkles! Kidlets took turns to be customers, waiters, ice-cream makers or register operators.  So much fun!!

That's all from me tonight, friends.  Jerry Maguire is on TV so I'm all set for a night of pinning and veging out.  Be sure to stop by Doodle Bugs to read the other Five for Friday posts!

Our Week in Photos!

This post is brought to you by the wonderful condition called 'Sunday Afternoon Laziness'!  I took lots of photos this week and have lots of fun activities to share... but am feeling too lazy to organise them as anything other than a photo dump with quick captions. I hope you'll still find an idea or two that you'll be able to use in your classroom. :)

Tumbling Chimps is perfect for fine motor fun! I found it at Big W - they have lots of cheap games that would be wonderful for the classroom.

Kidlets used bingo dabbers to dot over a line...

...and if they had time, cut along the line through the middle of the dots.  Fine motor and scissor skills all in one!

 Tracing this week was with our new Scentos markers! Had to remind them not to sniff the pen directly. :) The room smelt so gorgeous all week.

New favourite maths game? Dino Dash!  This super fun game works on early addition concepts, or you can use it as a counting game for those who still need that practise.

We played Beach Bingo (part of Mel's bundle) - working on numbers to 10. 

My kidlets loved making a Flip Strip from Cara's pack!  This week we matched quantities to 5 as our easy review task.

We worked on representing numbers in different ways using counting cubes and ten frames.  I called a number, the kidlets built it and then told me how they had organised their cubes - 6 might be 3 and 3; 4 and 2; 5 and 1 etc.

During Literacy groups we played Stretchy Snake Bingo -  I love this as phoneme blending practise.  The caller says each word as individual sounds, and the kidlets have to blend them together to figure out if that picture is on their card.

It was a bingo kind of week - we played Brooke's Alphabet Bingo, using wooden letters drawn from a bag instead of calling cards.  

Our sight word work was stamping with playdough!

We used the pocket chart to sort Letters, Words and Sentences - this was a whole class activity that will be reviewed with an independent cut & paste task this coming week.

Last but not least - I love these colourful vases of flowers that we made as part of our phonics work.

Phew! That's all from me, friends. :) Enjoy the last of your weekend!

Gorgeous Group Work... and one proud teacher!

I rely very heavily on group work to provide differentiated tasks for my Preppies.  I love small groups for practising skills and for teaching concepts with more teacher support.  At the beginning of each year I am always prepared for a few weeks of chaos management... you know the drill: kidlets wandering around, forgetting instructions, arguing, getting finished quickly and not knowing what to do next etc.  This year I've had my socks knocked off by a group of gorgeous kidlets who have taken to group work like ducks to water. :)  

Usually I would tailor group work activities so that week by week they became more independent. We focus on a new concept each week: stay with your group, do the activity as instructed, don't interrupt the teacher, ask your friends for help, move onto a 'Fast Finisher' task if you're done early.  After a few weeks we are all set for smooth sailing.  I am so proud of my Preppies this year because all of those things have happened in just a week of group work! (I'm vey lucky, I know!)

I organise my class into ability based groups.  We have group work 3 times each day, once first thing for  'Morning Groups' and then again for Literacy and Maths groups. One group works with me, one with my teacher aide and three independently.  Here's a peek at what we got up to during those times last week!

'Morning Groups' go for about 10 minutes and focus on fine motor skills.  During this time one group also changes their book box.  This week we started with lacing, using tongs with pom poms, cutting, tracing and 'Jumping Frogs' (a game I got for $1). Book boxes start next week. :)

Dr. Seuss lacing cards.

Tongs and pom pom patterns.

Literacy groups always have Guided Reading with me and last week we also had letter recognition, a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom name craft, sight word hopscotch and Letter School on iPads.

As a practice for group work this activity was amazing.  As a craft to display in the classroom... not so much! Kidlets had to cut out the leaves, glue to palm tree pieces down and arrange the letters of their name in order.

Sight word hopscotch.

For this letter recognition activity kidlets chose a card from the pile and coloured in the matching circle on their recording sheet.  The cards and worksheet are from Kindergarten Smorgasboard.

After reading our book during Guided Reading with me we played my letter recognition game, Beep, Beep!

During Maths groups we played 'Gone Buggy', made robot number lines, went fishing, worked with playdough mats and played 'Bugs & Numbers' on the iPads.

Linking up numbers 0-10 with plastic chain links. I love an activity that incorporates fine motor!

Playing 'Gone Buggy'. Kidlets have to collect 10 bugs in their jar.  Keep an eye on my store for this one!

I love playdough mats! These are from my Numbers 1-10 pack - they have picture clues so are perfect for independent work!

We went fishing for numbers 1-10 using my Gone Fishin' pack.  This was the favourite activity of the week for sure!  On Friday I was exhausted and thinking of scrapping Maths groups when I heard one precious kidlet say "I can't wait to go fishing later!".  We put the cards in a plastic boat with strips of blue cellophane. Attaching a paper clip to the mouth of the fish makes them magnetic - the rods have a magnet hot glued to a piece of rope.

Each team worked on their activity at the level that they were able to, with lots of smiles and laughs. Let's hope that next week goes as well as last! :) Do you love group work for your kidlets? I'd love to hear about how you make it work in your classroom! :)