Work your toddler’s fine motor skills and teach them about camouflage with this fun, low prep play-doh, and button activity!
My daughter LOVES play-doh! And as a parent, I do too!
What’s not to love?
Play doh is a great way to entertain your child! Not only does it keep them quiet for 10 minutes, but it teaches them a lot while they play too!
Want to encourage creativity while your child plays? Play-doh can be turned into anything! Ask your child to make you a cupcake, or a bug, or a castle.
Want to work on your child’s fine motor skills? Having your child manipulate play doh is a great way to work those little fingers!
Want to encourage independent play in your child? Lay out some play-doh and toys and they’ll be set for minimal supervision!
Need a sensory activity for your child? Use play doh! Adding play doh to any learning activity is a great way to help engage your child’s sensory skills. The great part about this is you can find play-doh mats for letters, numbers, and shapes just about anywhere!
Quick Tips!
Don’t like the mess play-doh leaves behind? Don’t stress! I have a few quick tips for you!
Lay down a blanket and a poster board before your kid starts playing.
That’s it!
We started laying down a poster board for my daughter to play on and it has made cleaning up a breeze!
Tired of scraping play doh off your table? Lay down a poster board! Whatever you can’t scrape off the board can just stay there!
Worried about it getting in your carpet? Lay down a blanket!
We lay down a blanket anytime my daughter plays with a sensory bin or play doh and it has saved me hours of vacuuming. You just have to make sure the blanket is big enough to cover your kid’s play area.
An Under the Sea Activity
We have been doing an Under the Sea theme to our preschool this week and my daughter loves it!
She’s also had this bag of buttons she’s been carrying around that I have been trying to find something to do with.
One morning I had on Ms. Rachel’s Beach Day Preschool video and she had a fun activity that led me to this idea. She had a picture of a puffer fish that she laid some play-doh over. She then put some pipe cleaners on the play doh to be the spikes of the puffer fish.
I loved it! It was simple, easy to put together, and there was so much potential to add other fun things to the activity!
Fun things like buttons!
Supplies
- Paper
- Colored pencil
- Play-Doh
- Buttons
How to do it
You will want to draw a picture of a crab on your paper. I admittedly had to pull up a picture on my phone to follow and even then I ended up starting over once or twice on a new paper.
Once you have your crab picture you are ready to go!
Either have your preschooler help you spread the play-doh over the picture of the crab, or you can do it for them. My daughter was a little confused about what we were doing the first time, so I did it for her.
From there show your preschooler how to put the buttons on the play-doh.
That’s it!
Once I did a few my daughter took over and played happily for quite a while. She really liked seeing the button impressions on the play-doh.
Camouflage
This activity is a great time to talk to your preschoolers about camouflage!
You don’t have to go too in depth about this. I like explaining the basic concepts of things and if my daughter seems interested, then we’ll dive into the details.
Anytime I did this play-doh and button activity with my daughter I explained that decorating the crab’s shell was a form of camouflage. Animals use camouflage to help them blend in with the things around them. It makes them harder to find when they want to hide from other animals.
A great video to watch with this is Blue’s Clues Camouflage Beneath the Sea. They have a cute little song and an octopus they play hide and seek with.
What do you think? Was there something fun that you added to this activity? Did you and your child learn more about camouflage after doing this activity?