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This Reading Mama

Fine Motor Playdough Snowmen

By thisreadingmama 2 Comments

Fine Motor Playdough Snowmen | This Reading Mama

My two preschoolers LOVE to play with playdough. I love it because it helps to strengthen their fine motor muscles use for pencil grip and writing. We use playdough almost daily in our home in some capacity. Just recently, my kiddos (ages 3.5 and 5) had a ball creating and writing about playdough snowmen!

Playdough Snowmen with Cootie Pieces

I had a thought that woke me one night. My kids love to play the Cootie game. Why not use those pieces to decorate playdough snowmen to integrate some additional fine motor work? (We have an abundance of store-bought playdough. Otherwise, I would have made my own playdough using this recipe.)

Use Cootie pieces to decorate playdough snowmen | This Reading Mama

So they did! I thought they turned out rather cute and funny!

Using Dice and Pony Beads with the Playdough Snowmen

The next day, we used our 1/2 spaghetti noodles (like we did with our playdough turkeys). They rolled a die/dice (to integrate a little math) and added that many pony beads to create arms on the snowman.

Adding pony beads to playdough snowmen ~ math game | This Reading Mama

Pinching the pony beads and sliding them onto the noodles is such a great way to strengthen those writing muscles!

Writing about Playdough Snowmen

Since I had already integrated a little math, I thought: why not throw in some writing? 🙂

Drawing our playdough snowmen | This Reading Mama

I encouraged my 5 year old son to draw a picture to match his snowman.

Writing about our playdough snowmen | This Reading Mama

I also challenged him to write about his snowman. We stretched out the sounds in the words (like I talk about in this post) as he wrote: I MAD a SOMAN (I made a snowman).

More Winter Playdough Fun:

FREE Winter Playdough mats | This Reading Mama

  • Winter (and Christmas) Open-Ended Playdough Mats
  • Footprints in the Snow
  • Snow Dough Recipe
  • Snowman Play Dough Mats
  • Homemade Snow Playdough

 

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~Becky

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Filed Under: Fine Motor Skills

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Comments

  1. Megan Sheakoski says

    January 23, 2014 at 10:12 am

    Love this idea! So many skills worked on in one fun play session!!!! PInning!

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      January 23, 2014 at 1:30 pm

      Thank you, Megan! 🙂

      Reply

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Hi! I’m Becky, a homeschooling mama with 4 blessings who keep me on my toes {and knees}. Before homeschooling, I was a classroom teacher (M.Ed.) and reading tutor. Read more about me here.

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