Playdough is easy-to-make, fun, and an excellent tool for learning!
Simply mix together ½ a cup of salt, 1 cup of plain flour, 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, 1 cup of water, 1 tablespoon of oil and a few drops of food colouring to make your own playdough!
In our Fun Friday Instagram post, we shared an idea to use playdough to increase fine motor skills, hand and finger strength, and literacy. Encourage your child to use their hands and fingers to roll out, bend, pinch, and pull the playdough to create letters. Use two different colours to show the difference between consonants and vowels and reinforce their ability to write each letter by having them trace each letter as they read the word out loud!
Squish the colours back together and try a new word!
Your child’s school should be able to indicate your child’s reading level, and provide you with the sounds and word structure (e.g. CVC like ‘cat’, CCVC like ‘spot’) your child is currently working on. Use what is given by the school and incorporate playdough to make reading and writing even more fun at home!
Challenge: use the words in one page of your child’s reader to “write” out with playdough. This will not only work on building the above but also work on your child’s visual tracking, working memory, sentence structure and punctuation skills!
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