Birthday Play Dough Kit

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I am loving our 12 Months of Play Dough series, but something that happens throughout all of the months is student birthdays! This classroom-sized Birthday Play Dough Kit is a good one to keep stocked all year round as a special treat for those special days, or to use for fun sensory play anytime!

My kids love any form of bake shop play and we make recipes as a group a couple of times a week, so I knew a cake-themed birthday kit would be a hit! Of course, you could customize your birthday kit to include references to birthday parties, increasing ages, etc.

The play dough and all materials are stored in my giant Ikea sectioned container, which I do all of my classroom-sized play dough kits in. You can also search snap lid containers on Amazon and find what would work best for you size-wise.

Making a Birthday Play Dough Kit

First, gather your materials:

• Brown play dough (I used our chocolate play dough recipe)
• Vanilla play dough (or white store bought)
• Strawberry play dough or pink lemonade play dough
• Kid paint scrapers
• Rolling pin
• Mini forks
• Mini cake pan
• Pipe cleaners twisted together to look like twisty birthday candles
• Rainbow-colored barley (left over from our Rainbow Barley Sensory Bin)

This play dough kit was intentionally open-ended, allowing children to create representations of their own birthday celebrations or birthday treats – if you had a significantly diverse group I would also add in small items that would be common in birthday celebrations in their cultures.

My daughter helped me test out this kit right before her birthday – she was so excited to practice making her birthday cake!

First, she took inventory of what was in the kit to plan her creation. Then, she rolled out the play dough to make her cake.

She experimented with the paint scrapers to make patterns in the “frosting” of her cake.

She meticulously added sprinkles of barley to her cake – because what is a birthday cake without rainbow sprinkles?

And then she ceremoniously added a single candle into the center of the cake, pinching the play dough around the pipe cleaners to hold them in place.

And then, of course, we had to practice singing “Happy Birthday!”

Other ways we could have played with this kit:

• Patterning the candles
• Slicing and serving the cake with the mini forks
• Layering the different colors of “cake”
• Making elaborate frosting designs with the different cake play doughs
• Rolling the play dough in the barley
• And more!

How do you celebrate birthdays in your classroom?

More Play Dough Fun

Looking for more fun ways to play and learn with play dough? Here are some of our favorites!

Simple Tools for Making Words With Play Dough

Rainbow Play Dough Kit

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Jennifer

Jennifer Tammy is a trained psychologist and single mom who runs a Montessori preschool out of her home in order to stay home full-time with her daughter, Miss G. Every day she shares easy recipes, parenting inspiration, and hands-on learning ideas on her blog, Sugar, Spice, and Glitter.

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