I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how my girls get tired and frustrated at certain times of day, especially the dreaded “witching hours” between about 4- 6pm. Is this a familiar time of day for you?
You already know how much we love play dough and all of its amazing benefits for young children. Using it as a stress reliever is one of those benefits as they can squeeze and squash it to their heart’s delight, releasing tension and focusing their attention when needed. So I thought, how about adding some aromatherapy into the equation to really help focus, calm and revive them while they play?
I did a little amateur research and found that lavender oil and cedar wood oil both have calming, relaxing properties and that lemon oil works to revive and refresh the mind. Just what my little people need when feeling tired and fed up! I managed to source these essential oils really easily on ebay and they can also be found in all high street health food stores.
The girls helped me to make the dough using our simple 4 minute, no-cook recipe and we split it into 3 parts. To those we added just a few drops of each oil, making sure to keep them separate so that the scents didn’t mix. They loved smelling each one and tried to think of ways to describe what it was like. It was interesting to try and get Cakie to compare them and say which she preferred, and she found it quite hard to do.
Next we found a variety of dry, non-scented, tactile ingredients to add another sensory dimension to the play. We mixed rough rock salt to one batch of dough, smooth and soft split peas to another and spiky rice to the third, talking about how they felt and looked as we did so.
When the dough was cut open it was lovely to see the new textures inside and it provided new opportunities for discussion and comparison.
Ideas of additions to create texture:
rice
rock salt
split peas
couscous
poppy seeds
lentils
cumin
rosemary
sawdust
sand
After playing, we stored these in 3 separate air-tight containers in the cupboard and will be pulling them out everyday for calming down sessions!
[Sidenote:] Only use a few drops of these oils as they are concentrated. Excessive consumption could be harmful, so don’t use these if your child still enjoys eating play dough (there are some children who do!) As with all things, do your own research and use your own wisdom.
Questions to ask as they play: how does it feel? can you describe what it’s like? what does it smell like? how does the smell make you feel? which is your favourite and why?
Learning Links:
- physical development: fine motor skills (pushing, squeezing, rolling, flattening with dough), muscle strengthening through kneading and mixing
- phse: discussing how something smells and feels, how it makes you feel, making comparisons, identifying feelings and emotions, talking about being calm and relaxed, expressing frustrations etc
- knowledge & understanding of the world: discussing and comparing textures and scents using appropriate descriptive language, combining materials
- literacy: descriptive language e.g. bumpy, lumpy, spiky, rough, smooth, soft, shiny etc
Cakie: 3 years 8 months
Pop: 2 years 1 month
Bean: 10 weeks
OMG I love this!! The play dough looks soooo inviting! We have added essence to our play dough to add scent before but not essential oils….I must try this! 🙂
What a great idea, playdoh calms EVERYONE in our house – I find it mega de stressing myself too ( a bit like making bread!) We’ve used lavender and orange oil before but never cedarwood. During the 4-6 slot I’m really tempted to put them infront of the TV – this is a fab alternative.
Great idea! I’ve trikes food essence but really want try aromatherapy oils now 🙂 your posts are so creative and really inspire me. Thank you!
oooh how fun. I especially like adding textures idea. xx
I’ve used koolaid or lemonade powder and glitter for scents and texture, and also cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice in the fall, peppermint extract (great at Christmas – white w/ red glitter) ) and almond, but never tried the oils and coarser textures. Great ideas!
I LOVE this idea!! I’m a huge fan of aromatherapy and letting them squish it sounds even better! I’m going to pin this and try it soon!!
Whenever Jack is feeling anxious I always get out the play dough. It soothes him. Calms him. There is just something about it. We have eucalyptus play dough at the moment. It smells so divine. How long do you reckon the play dough would last with the rice and split peas? I had rice in ours once and it seemed to dry out within a week.
I love this idea. We have only added spices and escences to ours so far I think we have a little wait before we can do this due to T’s YUM YUM YUM in response to the playdough.
Great ideas for a variation on the usual dough. Thanks for sharing this, Renee
This looks like a great idea for my playgroup to try. The moms will love it.
I like that I can be sneaky with this. Hmmm, you’re feeling frustrated Bobo? Here, play with this play dough. Fabulous!
Ive used koolaid powder and food extracts this way if they eat i dont have to be concerned. The children i work with will eat it at times.
Ah, a new weapon for when there are important things to do! I’m sure my sister’s kids will love playing around with this dough; I just hope they don’t eat it.