Invite your Children to explore the scents and textures of Christmas with this lovely – easy to set up – invitation to play.
We set up our little Christmas Play Dough Kit in a few minutes!
Both Emma (4) and Dylan (almost 2) sat for almost an hour, the end result was play dough made christmas decorations – of all shapes and sizes…
When you create an ‘invitation to play’ or simply put, when you set up an activity for your children to do, have a little think before hand of the actual objective, this always helps me to determine what should go into the activity or set up..
I wanted to set up a Christmas themed activity that incorporated:
- Free creative play
- Included sensory elements
- A quiet activity that required a little concentration
- Fine Motor and Hand Strength Building
- Relaxing and Stimulating at the same time… if that is even possible…
My Christmas Play Dough Kit included:
- Snow Dough – shiny and sparkly
- Peppermint Play Dough – scented just like Christmas
- Pom Poms
- Pipe Cleaners
- Buttons
- Bells
- Wooden Cotton Reels
- Metallic Confetti – in various designs
- Tiny Red Beads
- Christmas Tree, Star and Christmas Bauble Cookie Cutters
- Rolling pin
What I wanted my children to do… vs what actually happened…
- Relax and sit quietly while they enjoyed playing with everything Mommy had set up…
- more or less – they got a little excited at the end when they wanted to show me everything they had made
- Smell and Touch and Squeeze the Play Dough
- Yip – they loved the peppermint smell and Emma was very happy that ‘frozen??’ play dough had made an appearance…thank you Disney for that…
- Roll out dough & cut different shapes
- 1 Christmas Tree was rolled and made and cut
- Decorate these shapes
- One tree was decorated – with 5 decorations…
- Use the play dough as a board to print on – with the various textures – the wooden spool was included for this reason – for print making…
- No, no printing was done. Not even close. They loved our Apple Pie Play Dough Spice Printing activity, but this time I think there was to much ‘sparkly’ going on.
- Possibly – if they had not lost interest, keep some of the things they made so we can dry them and hang them on the tree…
- This it seemed for both kids was the main objective!! I had not said a word and they started churning out one decoration after the other – that resembled our play dough monsters – more than the pretty tree shaped/star adorned/beautiful bauble decorations that I imagined…
They thought their decorations were beautiful – and you know what, so did I!
Best decorations ever!
It is always at this point that I would love to be able to jump inside their little heads and see what they are seeing… I love the process and the interesting designs – each one carefully made and thought through…
This is without a doubt my favorite…
Something from Star Wars?
This below is THE TREE – the ONE…
This activity kept them entertained for an hour!
I loved that they took it where they wanted it to go… to ornaments, by the dozen!
I will do this again for sure!
