Animal Play Dough Play

When the children are bored this holiday season, consider making play dough and then crafting it into animals.  Pair your creative play dough critters with play activities afterwards, and you’ll provide a good hour or two of occupied fun!

 Make Play dough Animals

Let your child choose the animals they create. They will take their knowledge of animals and use their hands to manipulate the play dough to create it. Is there a better way to think about the features on an animal’s body?!

We use the same play dough recipe that almost everyone does:

• 2 cups of flour,
• 1 cup of salt,
• a table-spoon of cooking oil
• and enough water to make it into the play dough consistency

We divide the mixture into four and kneaded the colour in.

Our Play Dough Animals

Miss Possum was quick to make a snake. Then, we made a jelly fish, an echidna and some possums.

Animal Play dough Activities

• Place the animals around your backyard.  Our snake was put under a flower-pot, the possums in a tree, jellyfish in water and the echidna near an ant trail. We tried to think of the places that the animals would reside in the wild.
• Give your child a camera and let them move around the backyard and take photos of their animals in their environment.
• If your child makes a snake out of play dough, role play being snake safe. This is one of Miss Possums favourite activities.
• Do you have left over play dough? Why not make your own zoo and participate in some small world play with your child.
• Miss Possum loves to pretend we are the animals, so we play around the yard, and run away from predators

There’s always more learning you can provide than just the creation of play dough animals alone. A simple activity like this can provide many games to keep your child occupied during this holiday season.

What animal do you think your child would make out of play dough?