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Monster Play Dough!

October 11, 2011 by Anna Ranson

“Who you looking at?!” 
Make some marvellous, monster play dough for some fun, creative play time together! 
My friend Naomi made some fabulous creatures with her boys using play dough and googly eyes a little while ago, and this week, inspired by that, we made some SCARY MONSTERS of our own!
 For this activity I put out the following into some bowls:
  • googly eyes
  • pasta shapes
  • bottle tops
  • cut up pipe cleaners
  • lots of glitter!
Along with three big balls of play dough in red, blue and black made using our cooked play dough recipe that can be found here.

C. immediately talked about monsters and making them have “lots and lots and lots and lots of eyes” so she set to work! Pop tipped out all the glitter everywhere and had a wonderful time running her hands through it and flinging it e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e!

 Here are some of Cakie’s finished very-super-scary monsters!

And without even realising it, Pop’s monster is fantastic! She stuck in as many eyes as her little fingers could grasp and push, with a couple of well-placed bits of pasta!

 A good amount of squishing and squeezing occurred, brilliant for developing those tiny hand muscles, essential for writing.

I think this is my favourite one. C said “Mummy, this one’s saying ‘Peekaboo!'” Love it.

And we had a go at learning how to roll the dough using two flat hands on top, which is quite a skill of dexterity. C practised over and over and ended up making this fantastic stand up monster!

Learning Links:
  • fine motor skills: using a malleable material to pull, pinch, roll, flatten, mold, form, squeeze, squash to strengthen small hand muscles
  • creativity: creating representations of real life or imaginary things using another medium, experimenting with combining materials
  • literacy: developing language and storytelling through imaginary play
  • maths: counting out cup fulls to follow simple instructions/ recipes, discussing and comparing lengths and thicknesses
Cakie: 37 months
Pop: 18 months

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Filed Under: Fine Motor Development, Messy Play, Monsters, Playdough, Sensory Tagged With: Play Dough, Sensory Play

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Comments

  1. fluffymummy says

    October 11, 2011 at 1:20 pm

    Oh that looks fabby! We did something similar a little while ago but had googly eyes, pipe cleaners, buttons and little gems. Chloe loved it and I did make a few creations too!!

    Love the black glittery one, where so you get the very fine glitter from, i can only ever find really chunky bits.

    Thanks xx

  2. Kerri @ Baby Monitors Online says

    October 11, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    That looks like so much fun, and very good for the kids creative skills 🙂

    The monsters look fab!

  3. Naomi says

    October 11, 2011 at 2:07 pm

    So pleased I gave you an idea! They look fab, the stand up one made me giggle! I love how the addition of eyes immediately brings the blobs to life and each one seems to have a different character (with different voices to match of course!). We have black sparkly playdough at the moment too 🙂

  4. Domestic Goddesque says

    October 11, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    I admire you: I’m afraid that I can’t bear getting glitter everywhere. It gets into every crevice, much like the lentils I used with our pumpkin playdough. Dh subsequently banned the lentil from ever crossing the threshold…..

  5. Rachel T says

    October 11, 2011 at 9:58 pm

    Lovelovelove it. How long ’til I can do this with the girls? Maybe we’ll do it Thursday afternoon. Thank you, as ever, for the idea!

  6. Charlotte @ MakeDoAndFriend says

    October 12, 2011 at 9:52 am

    Love this! I’ve had the googly-eye idea in my notebook as a Halloween activity, but am definitely going to be adding a helluva lot of glitter into that now too!

    Blue Skies,

    Charlotte xo

  7. Melissa Taylor says

    October 12, 2011 at 6:24 pm

    oooh, super cool! (I might have to break my no-glitter-inside rule.)

  8. Susan Case says

    October 12, 2011 at 11:56 pm

    Love it! I want to do it! I love fun Halloween ideas. You might enjoy my blog: Kindergarten for Parents and Teachers. I’ll put a link to your blog.

  9. Lydia says

    October 13, 2011 at 5:16 am

    I love this idea, we’ve been having a lot of fun with monsters at our house lately and I think I may need to add a few of these into the mix. They look fun to make and play with. 🙂

  10. Jamie @ hands on : as we grow says

    October 17, 2011 at 3:49 pm

    Love those googly eyes in the play dough. How fun! Another brilliant idea from the one and only Anna. 🙂

  11. Anonymous says

    October 17, 2011 at 10:42 pm

    That is SOOO cool!! I am pinning that. I am starting a Linky Party if you want to link up at http://livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-ever-linky-party.html

  12. Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas says

    October 23, 2011 at 9:53 pm

    WE used your black play dough recipe this weekend! I’ll be linking to it in an upcoming post!! It was fabulous!

    Thanks for sharing on the Sunday Showcase! I hope to see you again this week! I showcased these on facebook & Twitter!

    Bern
    http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com/search/label/Sunday%20Showcase

  13. Daniel says

    August 12, 2012 at 6:20 pm

    Haha! Really cool playdough and great imagination on the monsters 🙂

  14. Anonymous says

    October 9, 2012 at 11:07 am

    I wonder…would the playdough harden if left to dry?..then the children could keep them or in my case as a childminder take them home 🙂 they look great!

  15. Jennifer Lynn says

    October 25, 2012 at 12:31 am

    I love all of your great play-doh ideas! So fun!
    Your play-doh monsters inspired me to give my little friends the opportunity to make some play-doh spiders!

    Check them out here: http://pinkpolkadotsandprek.blogspot.com/

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About The Imagination Tree Hello and welcome! I'm Anna, Mama of 4, early years teacher and play enthusiast from the UK! Click here to read more about me.

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