Playdough is a favorite toy at out house. My kids love to make their own creations, use our open-ended playdough mats, or use cookie cutters. I love playdough play because it fosters creativity and fine motor work.
NSis (2 years old) also loves to work puzzles. Within each given day, there’s usually a time that she goes over to our puzzle shelf, pulls off all the puzzles, and works them. Her favorite is still our Melissa & Doug Chunky Alphabet Puzzle. So, an idea popped into my head recently. I could mix two of her loves: playdough and puzzles and make our own puzzles with playdough!
Making Puzzles with Playdough
So I got to work, making homemade playdough {you can download the FREE printable recipe HERE}. NSis requested orange playdough. While it was cooling, I collected several different toys from around the house that would leave different-shaped indentations in the playdough. Of course, I had to mix in her favorite letter N (N is the first letter in her name, so it’s important to her.)
I rolled out the playdough and gently pushed each toy into the playdough so it would make a slight indentation in the dough.
I pulled off all the pieces, and placed them over to the side of the playdough puzzle. I called her over. (I wish you could have seen the excitement in her eyes!) I modeled how to match one of the shapes. She was very eager to take over and worked the rest of the playdough puzzle by matching the shapes (and letter N) for each object.
When finished, she called, “Again! Again!” I think she did it about 4-5 times all on her own. After this she lost interest, so we didn’t go any further. If she had shown more interest, I could have rolled up the playdough and then made another puzzle for her. Maybe another day…
More Playdough Ideas:
- Turkey Playdough Fun
- Winter/Christmas Playdough Mats
- Fine Motor Snowman Play
- Spring/Easter Playdough Mats
- Summer Playdough Mats
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Scott says
June 18, 2014 at 11:10 amI’ve traced objects onto paper to make a puzzle like this but never thought to use play dough in the same way. I like this! It can be redone again and again. And it doesn’t need to be permanent like the paper version. Thanks for this idea!
The Knowlton Nest says
June 18, 2014 at 11:24 pmI never thought of doing this either. This will be great with my 3 year old. I’m ready to make playdough!
thisreadingmama says
June 19, 2014 at 5:32 amI hope you have as much fun as we did! 🙂