Play dough patterns

We got the play dough out that I made the other week again.

I wanted to something different than our usual 'lets get the cutters and rollers out and play' sessions so decided to include our plastic animals and dinosaurs.

I wanted Alex to see the different patterns and shapes they would make when pushed and pressed into the dough. I wanted him to try and see the different shapes of the footprints too.

First we just created a bit of a scene with the play dough being the ground and I just let him have a bit of free play.

Then I encouraged him to make foot prints and imprints of the whole animals. We talked about the different textures they left, for instance, rough, scaly, smooth, and talked about the different shapes, like the snakes being wiggly not straight, but it having straight lines for it's pattern.

This interested him for a short while and I must admit didn't entertain him for as long as I thought it would.

But he continued to then play in his own way, rolling up dinosaurs in the dough and rescuing them by digging and cutting them out with a plastic knife. This was great fun for him!

I then cut out some face shapes that happened to be on the back of one of Alex's many Easter egg boxes, and he had loads of fun making funny faces with this.

At dinner time the animals were still out, James then asked questions to Alex about whether the animals/dinosaurs ate meat or vegetables, surprisingly Alex got quite a few of the answers right and I would never have thought of asking this myself so it was nice for some new ideas!

Play dough fun

Today I made play dough for the first time!

I have fond memories of my Mum making play dough for me as a child, I always loved playing with it, and remember sitting at my red ELC table making cakes, shapes and worms/snakes of course.

It's something I have been meaning to make for some time, but Alex had been given some play dough which unfortunately for me lasted longer than I thought it would (as in more than a year)!

Alex was so excited this morning as I was making it, it was a great bribe for him to get dressed quickly that's for sure!

I found the recipe over on the imagination tree and used the top one, as I didn't have any cream of tartar I used juice of a small lemon which seemed to do the trick as the play dough came out great to work with. (Thanks to jenniferslittleworld for mentioning that blog on your last post-helped me a lot once I'd remembered about it)!

There is something very satisfying when kneading warm play dough and mixing in the colours-ok so maybe I was slightly excited too!

I got out some of Alex's plastic cooking toys like chopping boards, knife, rolling pin as he has acquired a few different sets over the years, and gathered up lots of cutters.

He wasn't too fussed though and mainly just wanted to do his own thing, he literally spent all day playing with it apart from lunch, baking a cake with me (later post), and a quick half our playing some cbeebies games, and the last thing he said tonight was "can me play mellow play tomorrow" for some reason that's what he calls it, despite me saying it's called play dough 50 times already today :)

Even Sam wanted to see what all the fun was about

Linking up with Messy Mondays at theygrowsoquick