Are you looking for interesting activities for toddlers to make your weekend afternoon together more entertaining? You can do a lot with simple dough! No matter if youMake your own doughor buy ready-made, it will prove to be more diverse than you might think. You can not only make the well-known figures with it, but also numerous other activities. We've put together a few ideas for you to try when you're backkneading with children.
Building and kneading with children
Instead of the usual figures made of plasticine, you can knead 3D shapes with children. Depending on your age, you can use either toothpicks or less dangerous straws that you cut into equal-sized pieces. The children then form small balls out of the dough, which serve as connectors to attach the straws or toothpicks to one another. This means you can create not only simple geometric shapes, but also houses and other interesting shapes.
Tipp:You can also build figures like this with pasta. You can also color these in advance with food coloring.
Make your own clothes for dolls out of play dough
Girls like to play with their dolls. It only makes sense that they will also have fun making new clothes for them. You can easily knead skirts, dresses, shoes, handbags and even trousers with the material with children. You don't need anything else to play this playdough game and it's guaranteed to keep your child busy for a long time.
Play with playdough for toddlers – create prints
A simple playdough game that you can choose for both homemade and purchased playdough is this one. Simply flatten a piece of plasticine of any size or roll it out and then design it with impressions. And you can use any household item for this, provided there is no risk of injury:
Footprints of your child's dinosaurs, prints made with a fork, a straw, a sieve, flowers from old jewelry, pistils, a key, a comb, a whisk, etc. By the way, there are also special rollers with relief, with which you can make patterns just as quickly and easily and motifs can be transferred.
Transfer images from magazines
For this idea to work, it's best to use high-quality clay, as cheap brands may not work. But you can just try it out. Press a little plasticine onto the selected motif on the newspaper and then peel it off again. There should now be a print of the picture on the clay.
Kneading with children – cutting out shapes
Not a really new idea for kneading with children, but one that is very interesting for the little ones is to cut shapes out of the dough using cookie cutters. This can be done for certain festivals with the respective motifs or without a theme. For Christmas, for example, you simply use the usual cookie shapes with a Christmas tree, snowman, Santa Claus, etc. But there are also neutral shapes such as flowers, hearts, animals, geometric shapes and the like that you can use.
Play dough with children and decorate with dough
If you would like ideas for playing with dough for 2-year-olds and small children in general, this is also suitable. A piece of plasticine of any size is simply pressed flat or rolled out and can then be decorated with beads, stones, buttons and other objects. However, do not leave a smaller child unattended as the small parts could be swallowed. A great idea is also to use the lid of wet wipes as a frame. To do this, simply spread the dough in it and then decorate it.
Ideas with snakes
The basis is snake shapes, which you can easily create by rolling the dough back and forth on the table with the flat of your hand. You can then use it to knead different things with children depending on their age:
- Put letters together
- Put numbers together
- Imitate shapes based on a template (for small children)
- make a snake
Children have great imaginations. I'm sure you'll come up with more ideas.
Promote fine motor skills with play dough for children
A thick piece of modeling clay, a few pieces of plush wire and beads - that's all you need for this idea. The wire is inserted into the dough and the fun can begin. Simply thread colorful beads onto the wire. You should make sure beforehand that the holes in the beads are big enough. For older children, you can also use toothpicks or kebab skewers instead of the wire.
Idea for practicing colors: Sort the colors of the beads according to the color of the dough. Insert skewers or wire into green, purple, red, yellow, and other colored playdough. Only yellow beads go on the skewer of the yellow modeling clay, only green beads on the green one, etc.
Coloring pictures in a different way
Instead of just kneading with children or coloring in pictures, you can also combine the two. Print large images. When choosing pictures, make sure that the coloring areas are not too small. Since Easter is coming soon, you can choose large Easter eggs as coloring pictures, for example. You can find a few templates to print out below. The surfaces are then simply stuck with the plasticine. Small children can use small pieces for this and gradually fill in the areas. Older children can also shape pieces of the same size and transfer them to the sheet of paper.
Design faces
Draw a head without a face on a piece of paper or print one out (eg the template below). The children can now use the modeling clay to create different faces - smiling, sad, angry, tired, etc. In this way, the children learn which parts of the face are crucial for each facial expression.
Or how about this fun idea where you simply stick the dough on a glass bowl to create faces? Hair, eyes, nose and mouth are easily attached to the smooth surface and every new face is guaranteed to cause a laugh.
Thematic figures knead with children
If you would rather choose the good old figures as fun craft ideas and for kneading with children, you can also decide on a specific theme for which your child should then make figures that match. For spring, for example, flowers, butterflies, bees and the like can be made. Here there arefunny dough ideas for fall. In winter, snowflakes, Santa and snowman, etc. are suitable. Or how about the theme “food”? Hamburgers, sausages, cheese slices, popsicles, bananas, carrots and much more can be made with play dough.
Kneading a tree for spring with children
Collect small pine cones, flowers and leaves and then make such a tree. Depending on the colors and natural materials you use, the tree can represent different seasons. For the example above, first form a tree trunk out of brown modeling clay. Then use a sharp object to add bark patterns. Make the crown from large, flat circles in green (for an autumn tree in red, orange and yellow).
You can then decorate the crown with the natural materials you collected. Instead of a tree, you can also make a meadow or a hill with flowers and trees like in the picture above.
Knead with children and practice counting
Form balls out of the dough and place them in muffin cups or other containers. Place them on a piece of paper and write the numbers next to them (from 1 to 10, for example). Your child now has to press the respective number of objects into the dough. Suitable objects include beads, stones, buttons, but also pasta, pipe cleaners and the like.
By the way: Have you ever heard of the fascinating kinetic sand?Find out herehow to make it!
Tower with buttons and rainbow with noodles
Landscape with unicorns and a monster made of toothpicks
Ideas with noodles, popsicle sticks and buttons
Easter egg template with dots and zigzag pattern
Easter egg with striped pattern to print
Free popsicle template
Design a cute turtle with play dough
Create a colorful rainbow on paper with colored modeling clay
Simple mandala to knead with children
Print out head without face
Spend a fun afternoon crafting with the children
