Hey friends! After a week at the I Teach K conference, I am back and ready to catch up on my missed blog posts. 🙂 Today on my series, 31 Days of Kindergarten, I am talking about The Playdough Station in the Kindergarten Classroom.
There are two different types of teachers, the ones who love playdough and the ones who DO NOT LIKE playdough. 😉 Where are you on this list? I am on the list of teachers who love it. I believe that playdough helps assist in strengthening fine motor skills, as well as accomplish an academic skill through hands on learning.
What You Need for the Playdough Station
- Playdough – Does not matter if it is store bought or homemade
- Here is the recipe I use for easy, inexpensive kool-aid playdough. It smells delicious!
- Anchor chart with rules and procedures for the station. Include pictures and directions for cleaning up.
- Provide interactive playdough mats for creating letter names, sight words or their own names. Check out these ones that I made for my classroom!
- Playdough Letter Stampers (I have these ones and love them!)
- Flat space to use playdough. You could also use dollar store cookie sheets.
- Containers for playdough and tools; ie: mats, stampers, etc.
What to Teach Your Students About This Station
- How to open playdough containers.
- How to roll the playdough into a ‘snake’, to make letters easily.
- How to use the playdough mats.
- Expectations and rules for the playdough, tools, and surrounding area.
- How to put away the playdough and tools.
- What to do if the playdough is dried out.
What Students Do At This Station
- Build letters with playdough
- Stamp letters in playdough
- Build sight words with playdough
- Stamp sight words with playdough
- Build student names with playdough
- Use playdough to make beginning/middle/ending sound letters
- Build CVC words with playdough
How to ‘Energize’ this Station
- Add new playdough
- Add new playdough mats
- Add new playdough tools
- Try magic playdough
- New task cards
This is another easy to set up station that the students love! I created the playdough mats to be interactive, so students will not only use playdough, but also practice with dry erase markers. Students can write letters, beginning sounds, and even sentences. This extends the station and learning just a little more. Hope you gained some new ideas and plan on implementing a playdough station this upcoming school year!
Have you been following along with our 31 Days of Kindergarten posts?
You can check them out here:
Procedures and Rules for the Kindergarten Classroom
Music and Movement in the Kindergarten Classroom
How to Start Literacy Stations in Kindergarten
The Library Station in Kindergarten
All About the Writing Station in Kindergarten
Computer Station in Kindergarten Classroom
I’m a big play dough fan. It is such a good fine motor support and if used correctly can help students learn and play at the same time. Win. Win. I like to make my own. Pumpkin spice is a fall favorite, but I’m going to try your Koolaid microwave recipe.
Every year I make play dough to use in my kindergarten classroom. Thank you for sharing your microwave recipe. I tried it today and couldn’t believe how easy it was to make! Love it! Can’t wait to share it with my students.
That is so awesome! I love making this simple recipe. Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment! 🙂