Carrot Play Dough Invitation to Play

We have such a love for play dough in our home! We use it for learning and play almost every week. This carrot play dough is great for practicing skills like patterning, symmetry and also work on fine-motor skills. I set up a tray, which many people call an invitation to play, and let the kids explore with their imaginations.

Materials we used for our Carrot Play Dough Invitation to Play:

Tray

Light brown play dough

Orange foam flowers

Large decorative flowers

Carrot “eggs” left over from Easter

Felt carrot stickers

Carrot mini-erasers

Rolling pin, texture board, printing cube

Now, of course, you don’t need everything that we used. It’s just an idea to spur creativity in your home! I currently have three different trays on display that I’ll be sharing with you in the days to come. I let the kids select whichever one catches their interest. Our one rule is not to mix the sets. (Just because that would make it very hard to sort and save the supplies for later use.)

I have them stored on a set of shelves with all the supplies arranged in the trays, but the play dough is inside a plastic bag so that it doesn’t dry out.

For us, the goal with this kind of play dough activity is for them to use their creativity. Many times this will also cause them to demonstrate the things that we have been working on in school.

Jaida decided that it would be fun to fill the carrot “eggs” with the play dough. This worked on her fine-motor skills and arm muscles because she filled it too full and needed to press very hard to get the two pieces to come together.

After Jaida was done, Rissa decided to plant the carrots.

And pull them.

This worked on her fine-motor skills and she didn’t even realize it. She also used the texture board to cut the ‘ground’ around the carrots.

After she had pulled all the carrots, she decided it was time to make one of her daddy’s favorites…

Carrot Cake!!

This was a fantastic opportunity for her to demonstrate symmetry and visual design.

With pre-teens, it is often hard to pinpoint what level their skills are at because they want to try so many new activities, but rarely stick with them. This was a good opportunity to assess her skill at observing design and her budding desire to own a bakery. (One of the many things she plans to do when she grows up!)

For an easy look into the skills that your kids are working on right now, set up an invitation to play with play dough and let them explore freely!