Christmas time is such a wonderful time of year and it’s nice to be able to break free a few seasonal cookie cutters that have been hiding at the back of my over packed cooking utensil draw.
Each year I try and bake some cookies for friends and family but this year I have chosen to allow Possum (almost 2 years old) to use the cookie cutters in some amazing Christmas playdough. Click here to see a video of me making playdough.
Adding touches of Christmas to playdough
Possum loves playing with playdough and her little eyes light up as soon as she sees it. I think she particularly loved this Christmas playdough because I’d added coloured glitter to the red and green batches of dough and of course included my tinsel playdough, which you may have read about previously. Sparkle is great for developing visual awareness.
You may also choose to add Christmasy spices, such as cinnamon or cloves, which will fill a room with a delicious scent and add another level of sensory stimulation.
Possum loved pressing the cutters into the soft playdough, removing it with her pincer fingers and discovering the indentations left behind in the dough. She found that when the playdough was thick (as seen above) it was considerably more challenging to remove the cookie cutter from the dough.
Modelling for learning
Finding my opportunity I demonstrated to Possum that if she pounded the dough flat then it was easier to remove the cookie cutter from the dough and even pull away shapes!
She enjoyed watching what I was doing and did take on some of my advice by making the dough flatter before just doing whatever she wanted, which is great!
Her face says it all. She had a terrific time playing with the playdough and using the cookie cutter shapes. It could have gone on all afternoon.
Watching her play was a joy in itself and a great opportunity to learn about the three colours (or 2 colours and a shade) that she was playing with. What a fun way to develop language! During her time playing I added the words that described what she was doing, push, roll, press and cut were commonly heard.
Of course when playing with more than one colour there always comes a time when the colours just have to be mixed up and eventually make a gooey brown mess. LOL
How does your child like playing with playdough?
Be sure to check out my other Christmas inspired ideas –
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