Playing with play dough is a classic children’s activity! It’s a fun, calming and creative pastime – and what can beat that? Even better, we’ve got some great ideas to add to the experience that just might even benefit your child’s health, mood, motor skills and even some expression skills.
Here are three great tips for enhancing play dough time in your child’s routine:
1. You can use play dough to introduce kids to essential oils and aromatherapy. Mindfully choosing which essential oils you use in the play dough can help you target the specific needs of your child, from boosting immune systems to balancing moods. You can even use play dough time as part of a calming bedtime routine. Try lavender for calming effects and to promote a good night’s sleep, OnGuard Blend to help boost the immune system, or wild orange to revitalize your child’s mind and body.
2. Kneading and molding play dough generally helps kids develop their fine motor skills. Try adding extra textures to play dough like split peas, rock salt, rice or glitter. Adding textures to play dough, and encouraging discussion of your child’s experience with those textures, can help them understand and express their experiences with the world around them, as well as help you introduce new words into their vocabulary.
3. Sculpting play dough is an inherently imaginative activity, but adding different tools and objects into the play can help kids be even more creative. Use rolling pins, plastic forks and knives, and cookie cutters to add to creative play. You could also encourage your child to make a landscape for small, plastic animal figurines; use egg cartons, ice cube trays or small bowls as molds; or provide straws, cupcake liners, beads, feathers, toothpicks, etc. for your kids to create their own creatures and designs.
Ready to get started? A simple play dough recipe can be found in this recent doTERRA blog post. It’s cheap and easy to make, so don’t worry if an added texture or oil doesn’t quite work out. But to increase its shelf life, store the play dough in air tight containers after play is done.