playdough | Teaching Every Day

I tried my hand at homemade playdough for the first time. I am no cook. But since the end product is not supposed to be edible, how can I mess it up? I used this recipe from Domestic Super Hero. Don’t worry. You don’t need to be super hero at all. I made three batches: red, yellow, and blue.

Then the fun part: mixing colors! I divided each of my colors of playdough into two equal halves and then set one of the halves off to the side. The remaining half should be divided in half again. (Perfect time to talk about how fractions are equal parts of a whole.) Now you have two equal fourths of each color. Time to mix! Take 1/4 of the red and smoosh it together with 1/4 of the blue. It takes awhile, so you might have to help if your kiddo wears out on the mixing. See if your kid can guess the color that you are making…then see if it actually turns out. Our purple was a little on the gray side. But you can always add a pinch more red or blue to tweak the color.

Our last step was to put our colors on a color wheel. There are tons of free blank colo r wheels out there. I used the secondary color wheel from Mr. Printables. I liked how the color words were labeled so my daughters could match them up. If you don’t have a reader yet, give them clues like “Red has three letters. Can you find the word blue? It starts with the letter B. Orange is red and yellow mixed together so it should be in between them.”

And if you are still in the mood to play, here are 15 more ways you can learn with playdough!

Ah, playdough. How many ways can we learn with you? Let me count the ways.

counting- Make and count objects.
patterns- Make a pattern and see if your kiddo can continue it.
addition and subtraction- Use playdough to illustrate story problems. Make a nest with five eggs in it. What happens when you add two more eggs? How many do you have now?
guess the animal- Make animals and take turns guessing what it is the other person made.
pretend picnic/tea party- Make playdough food and good conversation during a pretend picnic.
textures- Play around with different materials to make imprint textures. Use lots of good adjectives to describe them.
write letters– Practice writing letters in playdough for a new handwriting experience.
form letters- Make 3D letters to feel their shapes.
2D shapes- Play “Name that shape!” Count sides and corners of shapes.
3D shapes- Make and compare 2D and 3D shapes.
colors- Let’s be honest. Playdough mixing happens whether we want it to or not. Make it a learning opportunity to make new colors.
hide and seek- Bury objects in have your child be the archaeologist or paleontologist. Use toothpicks and paintbrushes to carefully uncover the buried toy.
cutting- Practice cutting by rolling playdough into “snakes” and cutting them into little pieces.
match the imprint- Make imprints using objects and then have your child match the object to the imprint.
retell stories– Make characters to retell and act out books. How about re-creating The Three Little Pigs?