A Play-Doh Hodgepodge

ALuv is very much like his mama…an in-the-box thinker.  When NJoy came along 3 years later, I figured he would probably be an out-of-the-box thinker; seeing that most siblings are completely different.

Don’t get me wrong, NJoy can be an in-the-box thinker at times; like this parking lot made on our fire place .  But more often than not, it’s ALuv organizing all the cars (or blocks or trains) in a nice, neat line with NJoy coming along knocking all that hard work right over!  Oh, the joys of siblings!

NJoy’s favorite item to play with these days is Play-Doh.  But he’s not quite at the age in which he can play independently.  Playing with Play-Doh goes more like this: “Mommy, make this…mommy, make that!”  So when he asks every day about 10 times, I usually say, “No”.  But about 4-5 times a week, the mama guilt piles up and I cave in.

One thing I’ve noticed is when an in-the-box thinker (a.k.a. “control freak”/me) plays Play-Doh with an out-of-the-box thinker, my world is rocked in a major way.  Take for example this weekend.  The grandparents came for a visit and wanted to bring gifts.  They asked me for some gift ideas.  (By the way, I keep a mental list of educational & fun gift ideas for such occasions.)  I suggested this cute Play-Doh set featuring uppercase letters that I’d seen at Target.  This was the perfect choice for NJoy since he also loves letters.  It comes with a mat, which was laminated right away to last us more than 1 time!

They also brought this set that they’d had for a while at their house, which featured lower case letters.  A win-win all around!

What happened to my counter space?

As expected, NJoy was in his element with his Play-Doh!

So, what does fresh, new Play-Doh look like when you set a child like NJoy free to explore?  Why, a Play-Doh hodgepodge, of course!  Does it really matter which color top you place on the containers?!?

What did this in-the-box thinker do with this Play-Doh hodgepodge?  Since it was basically all one color, I rolled it out for ALuv to use as we reviewed his short o words.

Here he is re-matching his OP, OG, & OT words, then stamping 5 of the words  into the Play-Doh.

dog

hot

Cookie Monster is a big hit from this set and NJoy and ALuv thought it’d be funny if Cookie ate the paper.  I took their lead and called out words for Cookie Monster to “eat” as ALuv fed him.

So, I guess a Play-Doh hodgepodge does have a purpose in life after all, even for this in-the-box reading mama!

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~Becky