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!