Summer
holidays YAY, these activity suggestions are for kids who love all things
playdough and adults who share a little or a lot of that love! Cooked playdough,
stored between uses can, hygiene aside, last for the 6 whole weeks of a
summer holiday. So buckle up a doughy seat belt and get ready for a host
of activity suggestions that will keep your younger creatives and older sculpters
engaged and entertained.
Before we get to the lists, it can be useful
to consider if anyone will want to ..
Record their play, digitally or the more old fashioned way with
a diary or sketch book? not only
in text however, there are other ways to memorialise everyone's holiday
activities, maybe there's a horticultural show planned locally where children
can showcase their creations in an art or photography class? Making souvenirs
from places you visit is also a nice way to remember a summer's past although
do please be aware of any restrictions concerning pebble, flower or shell
collection.
Playing with dough outside
as well as inside? it can be useful to know what's expected. Would
a table outdoors benefit your doughy creators? or maybe you're already
a mud kitchen convert! In which case keeping an eye on
the sun's position is the only head's up I can offer, pun intended ;)
Mix up their own playdough and a variety of different 'doughs'?
The easiest playdough recipe comes as flour, salt and water. These
ingredients are ususally found in the kitchen in ample quantities.
A runny flour and water gloop is a simple glue, cream of tartar, handcream, essence or essential oils
and food colouring a luxury dough, the kitchen is a world of opportunity!
You may also find times when children want to shake things up a little, varying
the textures being playing with, these could include - cloud dough, sand clay,
paper mache, slime, actual cookie dough for baking, yum or playdough combined
with other mediums - artificial snow, rice or sawdust.
and so to the activity ideas. Most of these are reliant on additional
extras, like rice & sawdust, bits 'n' pieces or as they're called
in the trade 'loose parts' Simon Nicholson How Not to cheat children
–The Theory of Loose Parts. Landscape Architecture v62 p30-35, 1971
week one
Roll ropes,
plait plaits, cut shapes and enjoy
Play a Brussels
sprout squashing game
Collect &
press leaves into the surface of dough
Add flour
to wet mud and make stick people
Find the
nicest smell and add it to dough
Draw &
cut out snail shells for dough bodies
Get to know
spices or a new spice
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week two
Mix white
flour with baby oil add scoops and cups
Roleplay
ducks on a playdough pond
Create a
character from a favourite story book
Fill balloons with dough & colour with marker pens
Explore conductive
playdough
Balance marbles
on an dough Octopus' suckers
Cut circles and
create a group of emojis
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week three
Add scales
to a fish outline, dry & dab metallic
Hide &
sunbake a £1 coin to excavate next week
Build a bedsheet
tent & take in a tray of playdough
Have a Teddy
bear's playdough picnic
Twist craft stems into wings, add to dough bodies
Sculpt a
volcano around a jar, add vinegar + bicarb
Make a trinket
pot from clay
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week four
Jar of lights: cover with a sheet of clay, cut out stars
Excavate
the £1 pound coin to spend
Print icecream
cones & serve up some flavours
Use wobbly eyes to bring blobs of dough to life
Who's living
on the web?
Thread hole
punched bottle lids and balls of dough
Use a mirror
to recreate a funny face
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week five
Roll out
a green dough lawn & add flowers
Model with
dough, pasta shapes & craft stems
Turn a play figure into something else
Play 0's
& X's with 2 dough colours
Fill a picture
frame
Cut circles,
imprint with coins, dry and play shops
Shape a moon,
cover with a mosaic of buttons
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week six
Make a clay face on a tree
Stack ping pong balls in a tower using playdough
What shapes
do Lego bricks make on dough?
Cut 8 bristles
from a broom and use as whiskers ..
Sprinkle lavender
over purple playdough
Build a playdough
baby using family photos
Create a
hive full of busy bees
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Making your own summer themed playdough mats
An excellent way to personalise children's activities, is to provide
the materials that need to make their own summery playdough mats, base
sheets that underpin their sculpting and modelling, collage and mosaic work.
For this to be most effective open-ended pictures are good eg. environments
such as a beach - sea and sand, the sky - blue and clouds, a tree
- trunk and canopy or a woodland, and then situations such as a bee hive,
an open dolls house with empty rooms ready for doughy furniture to move in
or maybe an open flower waiting for a bee or playdough fairy to land!
Regular pencils, water pencils, paint or acrylic inks on 300gsm card are all ideal for this. If you find the card
warps as it dries place it image down onto a cloth and iron on a low heat
with the steam function turned off, a few seconds is usually enough to flatten
the sheet enough for it to be sucessfully laminated. A laminator will protect the artist's work from
any oil in the dough and a folder keeps the sheets safe between uses. After
this chalk pens can be used directly onto the laminated
sheets and a camera captures the heart of everything going
on and finished!
Playdough activity pages or the more frequently updated summer
page
Claw'esome crabs, Sand
clay recipe, Mer
Island
Rays
of sunshine, sunflower
cllage,
Have an awesome summer holiday
:D xx
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