Lemon Play-dough

During the first part of April to celebrate spring, I made this lemon scented play-dough!
It smelled so good!


Here is the recipe that I used.

• 2 cups flour,

 

• 1 cup salt,

 

• 2 table spoons vegetable oil,

 

• 2 table spoons cream of tartar,

 

• 1.5 cups boiling water

 

• A few drops of lemon extract,

 

• A couple drops of red food coloring.

 

• A few drops glycerin.

 

• 1. Mix dry ingredients.

 

• 2. Stir in oil.

 

• 3. Add water and mix until lumps are gone and it comes together.

 

• 4. Then kneed. Add scent, food coloring and or glycerin for shininess at kneading stage.

Store in an air tight container.

Cornmeal Play-dough

When I first started working with my second toddler class in March, they were in the middle of a western theme. I had trouble coming up with activities that fit in with the theme that were appropriate for toddlers. One of my ideas was play-dough, but I wasn’t sure how to tie it in with the theme. My co-teacher suggested something textured, grainy or rough. I thought of mixing in coffee grounds or oat meal and finally we settled on cornmeal.


I used a recipe that I found from Little Wonders Days.



I added some yellow food coloring to make it a brighter yellow. This play-dough did not come out grainy, but it had a nice texture. It was squishy like regular play-dough and had an occasional rough or grainy texture when broken apart. This was the first batch of play-dough that I actually cooked and it came out well. The kids enjoyed it. We kept things simple using small rolling pins and cookie cutters. The toddlers were most interested in squishing, pounding and rolling with their hands. It’s good fine motor practice!



As a side note, I found a pack of these containers at Walmart in the Tupperware section. I’ve found that they work well for the play-dough. They seal pretty well if you push down on the center of the lid and they are just the right size.

Pink Raspberry Play-dough

I am behind on my blog posts, but am hoping to post some of the activities I’ve done over these past couple of months. During the month of February, I made raspberry play-dough for Valentines. The more obvious choice was chocolate, but I had already done that for the month of January. The raspberry smelled good and came out a pinkish reddish color.

Here is the recipe that I used.

• 2 cups flour,
• 1 cup salt,
• 2 table spoons vegetable oil,
• 2 table spoons cream of tartar,
• 1.5 cups boiling water
• A few drops of raspberry extract,
• A couple drops of red food coloring.
• A few drops glycerin.

• 1. Mix dry ingredients.
• 2. Stir in oil.
• 3. Add water and mix until lumps are gone and it comes together.
• 4. Then kneed. Add scent, food coloring and or glycerin for shininess at kneading stage.

Store in an air tight container.

Hot Coco Play-dough

This week, our theme is hot chocolate. I have a few posts planned for showing what we have done. The first thing is I made hot coco play-dough. The recipe I used can be found here. It smelled like brownies while it was cooking and it still has a strong coco scent. The only thing I did differently was add a few drops of glycerin and another spoon full of coco powder.


I added a special surprise inside. I found marble sized white beads to use as marshmallows.



The kids have really liked playing with these. The challenge is not losing them. The play-dough was a success! I’m sure we’ll be using it until it dries out.

Wintery Vanilla Play-dough

I finally had the chance to make homemade play-dough. It came out pretty well I think, but we’ll see how the kids like it. I got inspiration and the recipe from the Imagination Tree. She has so many great ideas and the recipe works well. The only things I added for this batch of play-dough were some glitter for sparkle and vanilla extract for scent. This will be apart of our snow and snowmen theme. I wanted the play-dough to stay mostly white plus the sparkles, but the vanilla discolored the play-dough a bit. It’s okay though because I wanted the scent there. It will be something different for the kids since all they’ve had for a while are the tiny tubs of play-dough from Walmart. I have so many more play-dough ideas that I want to share throughout the upcoming months.

Magic Play-dough

Magic Play-dough

Materials:
Basic Play-dough Recipe:

1 ½ cups flour
- ¾ cup salt
- 1 tablespoon cream of tartar
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 ½ cup water
- Wooden spoon
- 2 medium sized bowls
Red, yellow and blue food coloring. Or powder paint.

Ideas:
Make up the play-dough.
Divide the play-dough into six balls.
In the middle of each ball, hide some food coloring or powder paint (two balls of each color).
First give them the yellow ball and red ball. As they play, the colors will appear and will appear to form orange
Later combine red and blue to make purple.
Combine blue and yellow to make green.
All the balls combined will form brown.

Good For:
Color Recognition,
Recognizing same and Different,
Recognizing changes,
Fine Motor skills.

Place play-dough in a plastic container or ziplock bag and refridgerate to make it last longer.

Activity found from the Play-Activities.com E-mail Newsletter.

Play-dough Candy Shop/Bakery

Today, I had fun making food with play-dough. This time, we decided to make candy instead of breakfast. When I sat down at the play-dough table, the little boy from Sweden who I made Breakfast with last time came over and sat on my lap. Since I wanted him to make his own creations, I offered him a chair and then he started making cookies. We had a sun cookie cutter and an oval one. He had trouble rolling the dough out with a rolling pin, but that was because it was a huge ball and because the play-dough was a little dry after being a week old. He’d ask for help and I’d get the dough flat. Then he’d take over pressing the cookie cutter into the play-dough and then cutting around the cookie cutter making perfect sun and oval cookies. I wish I had pictures of this!

Next, I asked him what I should make and since we had been talking about cookies, I started making desserts. I started with an ice cream cone. I made the triangle for the cone and then a small oval with a flat side for the ice cream. Since the play-dough was dry, it didn’t fit together that well, but he put it in his pile next to the cookies. I asked him if he knew what it was. He said no and I explained it was an ice cream cone. One purpose for making all of these things is to practice English with him. We usually talk about food while working with the play-dough, but if there are shapes, animals and other things for cookie cutters, we practice those words as well. He repeated the words ice cream cone and then I thought of making candy. M&M’s came to mind so I made two tiny M&M’s. I asked him again if he knew what this was. He said no and then I told him what they were and asked if he liked them. He repeated the word, M&M’s and then said that yes, he liked them. He asked me to make bigger M&M’s. I got a bigger piece of play-dough and made an M&M that was the size of three or four M&M’s put together. He loved that and put it in his pile of desserts.

Since it’s close to Halloween, I made a candy corn. He didn’t know the name for that either, but I told him it was a candy corn and that it’s Halloween candy. He put it in his pile after repeating, “Candy corn.” I started making a pumpkin, but it was turning out shaped more like a Hershey’s kiss so I went with it and asked if he knew what this was shaped like. He didn’t know, but I told him it was a Hershey’s kiss. He repeated it again and then asked what it was made out of. I explained that it was made from chocolate and he was very interested! He added it to his pile of desserts.

Then I made a cupcake by making a small ball, flattening the top and bottom and then making another small ball and smoothing it into the top to look like frosting. I wish I had different colors of play-dough so it looked like the actual foods. I started to make a donut, but realized I didn’t have enough play-dough so I asked his friends at the table. They gave me some, but the donut wasn’t coming out right so I asked him for more ideas. I asked what else he liked for food and he yelled, “Hamburgers!” Meanwhile, he was working on making big pancakes. I made the bottom bun which was flat, a smaller round piece for the meat, a small square piece for the cheese and I showed him my progress by showing him each piece and labeling them; the bun, meat, cheese etc. Before I could start on the top bun, he got excited and put the unfinished burger in his pile. Then he asked me for a hot dog so I took what little play-dough I had left and made the outside role and then a tiny hotdog. He said, “No, no, no, that’s not big.” I took some more play-dough and made another bigger hotdog which he really liked. He pretended to eat some of his food and then it was time to clean up. It was a lot of fun making more play-dough creations.

I found out from his mother that he asked her if he could come to my house sometime. I joked about that with him the other day, but he really took it seriously and now asks me about it everyday. He said something about going home and I thought he was talking about going home to his house, but then he said that he wanted to come to my house and that’s how it got started. I told him he could come to my house any time! I’ve written a lot of details here that probably won’t matter to anyone but me. His last day with us is on the 22nd of October and I write about some of my favorite kids so that I can keep the memories of the short time that I have with them. It’s interesting that the kids I’ve worked with for two years are less attached to me than the ones I’ve worked with for a few months or is it that I'm more attached to them? It's my luck or bad luck depending on how you look at things. A new kid will come to the center who I’ll bond with and then I find out they have to leave. It’s happened a few times and even though it’s hard to see them go, I’m thankful that I’ve known them.

Fall Colors Lesson Plan

Art:
Fall Color collage
Use construction paper or card stock as the background where the kids can glue different colored materials. For fall colors, use orange, green, red and yellow. The materials can be anything you can find around the house.
Paper,
Felt,
Other fabric,
Pictures of things like pumpkins, apples, leaves etc,
Pompoms,
Leaves
And whatever else you can think of for fall.

Coloring Pages:
Here are some fall theme coloring pages that I found.
Basket of apples,

fall leaves,
or
acorns.


Literacy:
Make a fall colors book.
Fall Colors Book

Sensory Play:
Fill a tub with fall colored pompoms, plastic apples, plastic pumpkins, acorns, leaves etc along with some cups and scoops.
There are a lot of good ideas for sensory tubs out there.
Autumn Sensory Tub
from School Time Adventures.
Autumn Sensory Bin
from 1Plus1Plus1.

Play-dough:
Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Play-dough Recipe
Add apple spices and food coloring.

Movement:
Take a nature walk.
Talk about the colors you see.
The leaves changing,
Fallen leaves and acorns,
Dark clouds,
Talk about other things you see, smell, hear and feel.

Math:
Take a platter or tray with dividers.
Cut pieces of red, green, yellow and brown construction paper and tape them inside the tray.
Have the children sort objects by color such as leaves, acorns, pumpkins, apples, etc. Basically, you can use any objects that are the colors you want them to recognize.

Matching:
Fall Colors Matching

Fall Colored Snacks or additions to Meals:
Red: Apple, strawberries or anything with tomato sauce.
Orange: orange slices, pumpkin, carrots.
Yellow: Corn, pineapple, bananas, cheese.
Green: Grapes, apple, Broccoli, celery.
Blue: Blueberries.
Brown: Wheat bread, whole wheat oat meal, brown rice, chocolate.
Idea inspired by the following post from: Counting Coconuts.

A Play-dough Breakfast

I was sitting at the play-dough table with one of the boys and he wanted to make breakfast. He’s from Sweden and is just starting to learn English. I’m using the play-dough to expand his vocabulary. Two weeks ago, he asked me to help him make something. I decided out of the blue to make eggs and he enjoyed seeing the different sized eggs. I started with eggs the size of a fingertip and each time, he’d say, “bigger bigger!” The biggest one ended up being the size of a baseball. After all the eggs were made, he started counting and made it up to 13. He was able to make it up to seven by himself and then we finished counting together. Another boy came over and started making snakes. We ended up cracking the eggs, breaking them apart and rolling out snakes until it was time to clean up.

Then this past week, we really got into making breakfast. He asked me to come over and make something with him, but he asked for the eggs this time. I started with a small egg again and he of course asked for a bigger one. Then a boy next to us started talking about Dunkin Donuts. I asked the boys if they liked donuts and they excitedly said yes. Then I asked if I should make more eggs and he said, “no, a dunkin.” I said, “you mean a donut?” Then he said, “yeah, a donut!” I made my first donut and then as usual, he asked for bigger. I made a few more donuts and he’d count them after each new one was made. I decided that we needed more food for breakfast and made pancakes. I knew pancakes are his favorite since he brings them all the time for lunch. He got excited and I made two pancakes. He repeated the word pancakes. I asked what he liked to drink with breakfast. He didn’t know what I meant so I asked if he liked tea, milk or juice. He said, “juice.” So I made a little cup out of play-dough which he took and put with the rest of his breakfast. It was clean up time, but I’m hoping to make more play-dough creations with this boy before he leaves this month. I’m also hoping to see him make some creations of his own. He’s come a long way since the spring when he first arrived.

Play-dough Guessing Game

Today, a few of the kids and I were playing with play-dough. We had out cookie cutters, rolling pins, a fake plastic knife and little plates. We started out making cupcakes. Once we got bored with that, I started making stars which kept getting smashed and ripped apart by a little girl I’ll call Kay. Every time I’d make a star, she’d ask if she could have it but then would destroy it. This quickly became a game and it was fun!
She’s one of the youngest in my group so I decided to test her on her shapes. First, I made a triangle which she guessed correctly. Then I made an oval which she thought was a circle. I told her it was close, but told her that it was an oval. It was a new word for her so she repeated it a couple of times. Then I made a square, but didn’t have a cookie cutter for that shape so it kept coming out crooked. I asked her if she knew what it was, but she wasn’t sure. I didn’t blame her for that one, but I told her I was trying to make a square and she repeated the word, “square?” I said, “Yes, it’s a square, but it was a little messed up.” After making some more stars and attempting to make a door out of a cookie cutter that she had picked out, we got back to shapes. I tested her on the oval again, but this time she had decided that it was a cake. I didn’t correct her this time because it could’ve been a cake or anything she wanted. Kay is one of those little girls who has a mind of her own and I like to encourage that.

The cookie cutter play-dough activity can also be good with letters and numbers if you have those cookie cutters. You make the letter cutout and then they can guess what it is. If they are helping you, it’s even better. If you don’t have the cookie cutters, just role the play-dough out into snake shapes and then make the letters and numbers from that. You don’t have to have an activity in mind with play-dough though. The best part of play-dough is that they can use their imagination and create anything.