Aim of the game:

Play dough is one of the most popular and age old activities for children all ages. This fun, activity reinforces body part vocabulary and allows your child to explore some emotions in a multisensory learning experience.

 What you will need:

  A couple of pots of Play dough – different colours if you have them but not essential. You can make this yourself or use shop bought play dough – we won’t judge!

Click here for a great play dough recipe from BBC Good Food

 How to play:

• Get out your pots of play dough and explain to your child that you’re going to make some play dough faces.
• Talk about the body parts as you put them together. Preschool children will probably know the basics (eyes, nose, mouth, ears etc) but will be learning more complex words such as eyelashes, eyebrows etc so talk about these are they make their play dough face.
• Once you and your child have constructed a face see if you can make it a ‘happy’ face or a ‘sad’ face or ‘angry’ face by changing the features.

 How to extend:

• Have a play dough mat each so your child can ‘help’ you make your play dough face. Ask them what to make for your face next.
• If you have different coloured play dough, model the language as you make the face(s) (“I’m making a green nose and yellow eyebrows”)
• If your child needs help then you could use a play dough mat to support their creativity. We like these from Sparkle Box here
• If your child needs some help with emotions then see if they can copy some pictures – you can Google images or we like the Sparkle Box ones here
• Extend the emotions further by seeing if they can copy them  – using a mirror can help your child to make the facial expression.
• Play a guessing game – you set the facial expression on the play dough mat and see if your child can guess whether they are ‘happy’, ‘sad’, ‘angry’, scared’ etc.

Back to Activities for Preschoolers