Are you running out of ideas to help keep your children busy and entertained during lock down? Here, at Red Apple, we provide a lot of sensory activities for the children as it has so many benefits including therapeutic value which I am sure everyone could appreciate at the moment. Playdough is a very popular sensory experience that most ages enjoy exploring and experimenting with.
Below, we have listed another 6 reasons why we provide children with play dough at Red Apple:
- It promotes and supports concentration.
- It contributes to strengthening their muscles in their little hands .
- Creativity and imagination – there are so many things that children can create with playdough.
- Vocabulary – through talking about what they are doing creating, adding, you are introducing new words to their vocabulary.
- Numeracy – Science concepts – by making the recipe together, you are providing your child with the opportunity to learn about measurements, cause and effect, experimentation, making It softer, harder, adding different ingredients in to create different textures and smells.
- It’s calming and relaxing – even at the centre when we are sitting down with the children talking about what they are creating, we will instinctively pick up some play dough and start creating our own masterpiece.
Some things we like to add to our play dough experiences can include the following:
- food colouring
- food flavouring
- Essential oils
- lavender
- herbs
- cocoa powder
- ginger
- cinnamon
- turmeric
- buttons
- shells
- sticks
- stones
- tan bark
- leaves
- flowers
- feathers·
- lolly sticks
If you have old baking trays, tins, cutters, rolling pins etc for the children to use, they will surprise you with what they can come up with.
As you can see the ideas are endless therefore creating a fun, explorative, creative quiet space for your child.
