Adding texture and telling stories – new ways to play with dough

If you love play dough, or even if your children do while you merely tolerate it, you might find yourselves playing with it in the same way each time it comes out. The skills your child is building on as they play with dough, including fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, will be learnt no matter how you play – no need to make it fancy at all – but if you feel you want to change up your routine, here are some ideas for different ways to play with dough. 

Never worry about making your play dough set up overly designed or complicated. You want to make it fun for you and your child, so lean in to the ways you enjoy playing.  

Perhaps that’s setting out some dough with a few shape cutters, maybe a rolling pin, and perhaps some bits and pieces to stick into it – all of these different tools and textures will be adding to your child’s experience and getting them to move their hands and fingers in different ways, which is brilliant for their fine motor development.  

You can add some storytelling to your play by using dough to make models of characters or items from a favourite book 

Books with lots of animal characters, like The Gruffalo, are perfect for this. Making snakes, long tails and big round Gruffalo bellies will give your child the opportunity to practise making sausage and circle shapes by rubbing their hands together. 

Once you have the characters you need, use them to act out the story – or if your child is more interested in adding to the scene they could build more parts of the story. If you make characters from The Gruffalo, why not use dough, or other toys and objects, to build the animal’s houses around each play dough character, or use play dough to make the different meals – owl ice-cream, anyone? 

Add new textures to the play dough (as long as you don’t mind a bit of mess!) 

Adding textures like sand, soil or small pebbles to play dough will make it feel different, and act differently when you stick it together. This not only gives your child a whole new sensory experience, it also means they will be adapting their movements, and plans, to the way the dough has changed.  

Take it outside and get nature involved 

Take your dough outdoors and play in the fresh air, you might be surprised by how this inspires your child’s inventiveness. They might choose to collect natural items like leaves, sticks or shells to add to their creations, or concentrate on making models of the things they see around them – cars, trees or slides might become dough versions of themselves which you can use to recreate your adventures with toy animals or dolls.  

However you use play dough, enjoy the experience of having something to do with your hands and knowing your child’s imagination can run wild as they play.