I love to incorporate playdough into our classroom learning time because it is such a fun and engaging way for students to practice academic skills while also working on their fine motor skills. Playdough mats are the perfect way to blend fun and learning for your students. Playdough is so much more than something for students to play with. It can help with fine motor skills, it’s calming, it boosts creativity, it enhances hand-eye coordination and so much more. Here are some of my favorite playdough mats for adding some fun and engaging learning in the classroom.
We Love Playdough!
In this classroom, we love all things playdough. It is such a great tool for students to use while learning. Besides being loads of fun to build, mold, and squish, playdough has many fantastic fine-motor benefits.
While students are manipulating their play dough they are actually building fine motor skills in their tiny hands. With our young primary students, including activities that are designed to help strengthen those hand muscles is vitally important. Playdough is a great activity because with all the squishing, rolling, tearing and molding movements students are getting a real hand workout!
Playdough is also a great tool to help students build hand-eye coordination. As students build with playdough they are practicing this important skill without even knowing it. All that building is sending a plethora of information to the brain to help students learn to connect their vision with their actions.
Playdough can also be calming and comforting to play with, much like a stress ball! It also allows students to be creative, use different colors, and build different things. You can even make homemade playdough that includes essential oils to add an additional calming effect.
Playdough is an all-around awesome tool and perfect for our young students. And since it is so versatile, it can be used with so many academic concepts. With all these benefits I love to incorporate into learning time whenever possible.
Playdough Alphabet Mats
These alphabet playdough mats are a great way for students to practice letters independently. On each mat students will work on letter identification and letter formation, two important foundational skills for kindergarten. They can take them back to their desks and work on these mats during centers or after they finish a task early.
Students will use the playdough mats to make lowercase and uppercase letters. They will also get to practice finding and writing the letter at the bottom of the mat. This is a great activity for a word work center or morning tub!
This pack of Alphabet Playdough Mats includes all 26 letters uppercase and lowercase letters. It is a great resource for practicing the alphabet in a fun and interactive way. Let the students pick their favorite color of playdough and get to work molding it into letters!
Playdough Sight Word Mats
These playdough mats featuring sight words are a fantastic hands-on activity that students will love! Similar to the alphabet mats, these mats help students practice important sight words. Students will work on word recognition, spelling and writing as they complete these interactive sight word activities.
Using playdough, students will mold and manipulate to make each high-frequency word on the mat. They will also get to practice finding the word at the bottom of the mat and writing it out.
This is another great activity for centers or to be worked on independently. Plus, it is a wonderful way to build those fine motor skills which are so important! Grab this pack of 40 Sight Word Playdough Mats and have endless fun and learning with playdough in your classroom!
Playdough Number Mats
Playdough Number Mats are a fun, interactive way for students to practice numbers and counting! They will also work on number identification and number formation with these hands-on learning mats.
These mats, like the sight word mats, offer up a creative way to build numbers with playdough. These can be an independent desk activity or added to as an activity for centers!
Students will mold their playdough into the shape of the number. There is also an area for them to find the number, trace the number and build the number in the boxes at the bottom.
Fill your Centers with Playdough!
You can find all of these playdough mats in my store at Teachers Pay Teachers. They are a great way to provide a consistent center activity all year long. Just change out the mats to target the skill or concept you are working on.
Save These Fun Playdough Activities for late
Save these fun, interactive playdough mat activities to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can quickly and easily find them later!
