Exploring Textures with Snowflake Play Dough

We had a lot of winter-loving fun at our place today! So many fun winter activities! I can’t wait to share them with you, but I’ll settle for just one activity today. We made a beautiful blue play dough  and combined it some lovely white accessories and had a great time exploring imprinting, textures and design. This snowflake play dough invitation to play is sure to inspire creativity in your preschoolers!

Snowflake Play Dough Invitation to Play

Shiloh loves playing with little bits & pieces, so combining little snowflakes, tiny pom poms and vase filler with the bright blue play dough was totally irresistible to her. She could hardly wait for me to finish putting it together before she dove in. (Actually, I had to pay her off with a small chunk of play dough in order to keep her hands busy while I took a picture of the tray.)

Materials used for the Snowflake Play Dough:

White sparkly pom poms

Flat snowflake buttons

Snowflake foam stickers

White vase filler

Blue play dough

I helped her roll out the play dough initially, but she didn’t want my help after that.  She poked and prodded. Then, she started sticking the snowflakes into the play dough and pulling them out.

I demonstrated lightly pushing the snowflakes and pulling them out to show the imprints in the play dough.  Then, we rolled the snowflakes into the dough to see what the different levels of pressure could produce.

We used some of the textured play dough rolling pins that we have and contrasted them with the snowflake shapes.

Of course, Shiloh also wanted to serve ‘tea’ along with our texture explorations!

After Shiloh was finished, my 10-year-old decided that she wanted in on the fun and she created a fun little snowman using the play dough as ‘glue’. She rolled one of the vase filler balls around on the dough to create a fun textured canvas to play on.

We also used our most favorite play dough recipe of all to create this play dough! Here’s the recipe, so that you can fall in love with it too:

• 2 cups flour (we used unbleached white wheat flour, but you can use all-purpose with no difference)
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 Tablespoon cream of tartar
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 Tablespoon glycerin
• 1 1/2 cups hot water
• Gel food coloring ( we LOVE Wilton Gel colors! This one is Sky Blue)

Check out some other great winter Preschool activities here!