Month: October 2020

Making play dough with your children is an activity that encourages and supports learning in math, science, sensory, social/emotional, creativity, language and vocabulary.  Let you child get their hands messy and busy making play dough.

You will need:

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

2 tablespoons Cream of Tarter (found in the spice aisle)

2-3 tablespoons Vegetable oil

food colouring (I use a food grade Icing colour paste)

2 cups boiling water

***depending on the brand of flour you use, you may need a little more or less.

Mix the flour, salt and cream of tarter together in a large boil.

Add in the food colouring, oil and boiling water. (add 1 3/4 cups of water first, hold off the the last 1/4 cup, depending on the brand of flour you use, you may need less water or more flour depending on the texture you want for your playdough)  Here, I mixed yellow and a bit of red to make an orange (although it’s showing up yellow.

Stir all together until everything is well combined.

Start kneading the mixture into a dough.  If the dough is too wet, add some more flour.  Knead some more.  Knead until a ball forms and everything is well combined including the colour.

Let your child participate in making the play dough by measuring out the ingredients, stirring or whisking the dry ingredients and putting the ingredients into the bowl.  For safety, adults should pour in the boiling water and do the initial stirring of it.  

Other things to try adding to your play dough before the kneading stage, cocoa powder, Instant coffee to the boiling water for both the scent and colour, lavender buds/essential oils or glitter!  There are so many options you can experiment with.

Tools to consider: rolling pin, butter knife, scissors, garlic press or cookie cutters

Some Fun additions:  Googly eyes, buttons, rocks, animals, sticks, pipe cleaners

Store the play dough for up to 2 weeks in an airtight container.

Here is an easy homemade ABC activity made out of  large popsicle sticks and clothes pins (items from the “Learning Materials,” Dollar Store post).  This is a great activity for fostering letter recognition, vocabulary, eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills.

I wrote the “Lower” case alphabet on one side of the clothes pin and the “Upper” case on the other side.

I made two sets so there are extra letters to build words from.  Consider making extra vowels, “a-e-i-o-u” to build longer words.

On the large popsicle sticks, you can print simple words that your child can easily connect with, for example:   your child’s name, cat, dog, car, tree etc.  I used a Black Sharpie marker for this.  Make sure to space out the letters on the popsicle sticks so there’s enough room to clip OVER the existing letters (see photo).  I also added toys/props  to further support the learning.   These props help make that connection in recognizing the word and the item, making it a more concrete experience.

Also, please take a look at the Fall-winter programming for Burnaby provided by Anita Olson, our Early Childhood Community Consultant (click on the link):

FREE EDITED Programs fall-winter 2020 Master Burnaby

Anita Olson – Early Childhood Community Consultant (ECCC) – supporting parents/caregivers with children ages 0-5 years old. Questions/concerns about behaviour, development, needing strategies or other resources call/text/email for a free virtual or socially distanced consultation.

604-723-9548 or email aolson@fsgv.ca

Join Monday’s Coffee and Chat parenting support group to get connected with other parents, learn some helpful tips about parenting and discuss your own parental celebrations and challenges. Meetings are via MS Teams – email aolson@fsgv.ca, subject line JOIN COFFEE AND CHAT, and an invite will be emailed to you. For assistance in MS Teams installation click here.

If you are interested in joining the ECCC Resource Newsletter please email aolson@fsgv.ca, subject line ADD TO RESOURCE NEWSLETTER and you will begin to receive children’s activity ideas, family resources offered in Burnaby and so much more.