Play dough Lesson Plans HELP?

Question

I teach 3 year olds and My topic this week is play dough. I have already had them make shapes, counting, etc with play dough. I am stuck on what else I can do. I am a new teacher and I am broke so keep that in mind. lol

Answer 1

There are lots of things you can do.  You can print their names out in a large font and then laminate or cover them with contact paper and let them roll snakes to cover the shapes of the leters in their name.  You could also do this with letters or numbers.  www.childcareland.com has a lot of ideas and free printables for this.  Also think about adding different things to the playdough.  Different scents can be exciting or mixing in some glitter.  Giving them different things to use with the playdough is always fun. one day you can do cooking supplies, like a cookie sheet and spatulas with cookie cutters.  it's great for their hand-eye and small motor to try to move the cookies with the spatula.  Another idea would be to let them drive cars through the playdough and observe the different tracks differnt cars make.  I'm doing a dental health unit this week and have mixed small chunks of fun foam into white playdough and given the kids tweezers to remove the "cavities"(foam) from the playdough.  Also we will be sitcking playdough around the pegs of mega blocks and use string to "floss" it out.  

playdough is great for experimenting with color mixing.  Also green playdough makes great grass for your toy animals to play in.  

other fun tools:  a garlic press, egg slicer, net bags that fruit comes in

hope that helps

Answer 2

make them make themselves

or...

I remeber when i was younger I always liked to pretend i would be cooking with the playdough

maybe have a food day/playdough day

good luck i hope i got to you

Answer 3

imagination... make their own special animal! then, have each kid come around the room, and they can share what their animal is and what makes it special....

(they won't be amazing, but hey... it'd be fun)

Answer 4

How about making playdough in the classroom. There are some great no cooking required recipes on the net.

Answer 5

try to make them in to people :)

Answer 6

You could have them make an animal and help them make the first letter of their name.

Answer 7

why don't you have the kids make their own playdough?

http://www.teachnet.com/lesson/art/playd...

if not:

http://www.silkysteps.com/family.cfm/cID...

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/pages/40...

Answer 8

do something with the colors of the play dough

Answer 9

Three year olds should be manipulating play-doh.

They need to learn to tear the dough, roll a snake,  press a pancake,  and roll out doh with a roller or rolling pin.

Poking fingers into playdough, pushing fingers through the doh, ...

How does it feel? How does it smell?

Can you make it bigger? Can you make it smaller?

You may find that some of the children cannot do these things. They will need practice.

You may have them poke popsicle sticks into lumps of dough and count them.

They can then cut it with scissors, cut it with cookie cutters, cut it with a plastic knife, cut it with a pizza cutter or pastry edger. Talk about all the ways things can be cut. What do you use to cut ribbon? What do you use to cut cake?

You can pinch a bowl and have the children make little eggs to go in the "nest"

Make animals by pressing a pancake and adding pieces of dough for eyes, nose, and mouth. What animal are you making? What does the animal say? Where does the animal live?

Teach them to clean play doh up - vacuum up the pieces using a piece of play doh.