The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

Monster Play Dough!

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“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

Comments

  1. fluffymummy says

    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

  3. Naomi says

    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

    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

    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!

  8. Susan Case says

    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

    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. 🙂

  14. Anonymous says

    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!