Fall Play Dough Kit - The Kindergarten Connection

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We are nearing the end of our 12 Months of Classroom Play Dough Kits and our series would not be complete without a Fall Play Dough Kit! We are loving all of the fun fall crafts and activities around, and this is a great addition.

As with all of our play dough kits, I emphasized open-ended play and gave lots of manipulative options for the kids to use while playing with their play dough.

Offering lots of manipulatives not only allows children to extend their play, it also allows for them to experiment with different concepts and express their understandings through physical representation. For example, the colored pumpkin seeds were used by one child to practice counting by two’s!

Manipulatives also offer different fine motor skill developments – for example, encouraging pincer grip to pick up individual pumpkin seeds – and are great for involving children who are play dough-averse. (Yes, those kids do exist!)

What’s In Our Fall Play Dough Kit

Here’s what I included in this month’s fall play dough kit:

Chocolate play dough
Orange play dough
Red play dough
Yellow play dough
Wooden leaf shapes
Small pumpkin
Colored pumpkin seeds (this colored pumpkin seeds tutorial is helpful).
Fall confetti
Fall leaves

As always, I put the different components in our Ikea sectioned container for easy clean-up and to keep things orderly.

The kids had a lot of fun first making “cakes” and using the wooden leaves as serving platters.

There was some elaborate cake decorating…

And some planting of pumpkin patches.

My daughter also grabbed some leaf cookie cutters and added some play dough leaves to our play.

There was also some practice counting two-by-two’s.

I don’t know what this was, but it looks like either a delicious truffle or a pretty jewelry box!

One of my favorite ways that they played was covering the wooden leaves with the colored pumpkin seeds and then lifting the leaves to make a pretty outline.

I’m always astounded by the different ways the kids discover to play with their play dough. It’s never the same play twice and it’s wonderful seeing some of my reluctant learners express concepts in their sensory play that they are sometimes nervous to explore in their more formal work.