On Wednesdays, we work with a group of teen moms doing parenting classes and showing them a skill so they can earn some extra money on the side. My boys mostly play while I work and chat with the moms. But today my toddler wanted to help me because I was teaching the moms how to make play dough to use at home with their kiddos. One of my hopes in our time is help them and inspire them to play with their kids.
We had lots of fun making it but the hard part for him was to let the girls take ALL the play dough home that he helped make. So, I promised him that we would make some play dough when we got home.
We made some glitter scented Christmas play dough you can get the recipe here for making it in small batches of no cook play dough or for large batches try this recipe here! My son was so excited he wanted to do everything play dough for his preschool activities. So we had fun coming up with all sorts of Christmas tree preschool activities using our play dough mats. If you haven’t used play dough mats before, I highly recommend them. I usually use contact paper to “laminate” them and we use them over and over again. Play dough mats are great for parties, your classroom or just a fun busy activity for the kiddos.
Preschool Christmas Activity: Alphabet Play Dough Tree
My favorite was our Alphabet Christmas Tree! I love all the colors in it. There are lots of themed play dough mats online but we used this one from This Reading Mama blog and it’s free!
ABC’s Practice: Decorating the tree with the alphabet! We said our ABC’s as we placed the letters on the tree. Then I had him pick out the letters we’ve studied thus far–he had a little trouble with this (so many letters to choose from).
Name Practice: This was also a great way to sneak in practicing the letters in his name. I had him find all the letters from the tree that were in his name.
Colors practice: We also had a chance to practice his colors. I would say, “Can you find the yellow F?”
Fine Motor Skills Practice: He covered the tree printable with play dough this was a great way for him to practice some fine motor skills he doesn’t always get a chance to work on.
Later he rolled red play dough around to make Christmas ornaments for the tree.
Number Practice– I used our magnetic numbers and I would randomly drop one. The one I dropped was the amount of ornaments he had to make for the tree.
