Does it snow where you live? It does here, sometimes. We aren’t the North East where the ground stays white for the entire winter season (and beyond) but we do get some snow. It is cold the whole winter long, so when it does snow it makes bundling up in 17 layers of knitted accessories worth it. We like to make snowmen, have snowball fights and after throwing in a few snow angels we are ready to enjoy it from inside our warm house. Regardless of how cold it is, how frustrating it can be to drive in or how wet it makes everything, snow is beautiful. This is the inspiration behind this Winter Alphabet Play Dough Mat set. Check out our year of FREE alphabet play dough mats Here!
*Pair this with our Snow Centers and Activities for Pre-K and Kindergarten!
Alphabet Winter Play Dough Mats
Whether you are covered in snow or sporting a scarf for the fun of it while the sun shines warmly on your skin, these Winter Alphabet Play Dough Mats are fun! We have included the full alphabet with both upper and lowercase letters.
Who Should Use These Play Dough Mats?
These play dough mats are perfect for children of many levels of learning, from toddlers all the way through Kindergarten. Whether you are introducing letters or moving towards sight words, these play dough mats are a fun way to encourage learning.
Features
Not only are these play dough mats extremely beneficial for literacy, exploring ABCs, beginning sounds and sight words but have other development benefits as well. These mats, in combination with play dough, become a fabulous sensory activity, help strengthen fine motor skills as well as assisting with prewriting.
Each page has it’s own letter and is decorated with a fun snowy scene with two kids bundled up and ready to play.
Preparing The Play Dough Mats
If you haven’t played with our printable play dough mats before, you are in for a major treat. Not only do kids love and benefit from them, they are extremely easy to prep. Once these mats are prepared, they are prepared forever. This is such a low prep activity, you’ll want more and more.
The first thing I do is print out each page.
Next I laminate. Lamination is important for play dough mats because without it, the play dough will stick to the paper. If you are only planning on using this activity one time that may be okay, but if you would like to use these mats over and over, I would suggest laminating!
When preparing this activity for an individual child you can laminate pages back to back, to save on laminating sheets. If you are preparing for a small group or a classroom, it will be more functional to laminate each page separately.
Next, grab your favorite play dough and start exploring the ABCs!
RELATED RESOURCE: Alphabet Writing Centers
How to use the Mats with Play Dough:
- The letters can be filled in completely with play dough.
- Use different colors of play dough in each letter.
- Children can create balls of play dough to make dotted lines through the letter.
- Create snakes with the play dough to ‘write’ the letters.
- Play Dough Tools are also fantastic for this activity.
Alternative Play Ideas:
These ABC Mats are not limited to only play dough. You can also use other objects to fill the letters. For instance:
- Pom Poms
- Dry Erase Markers
- Pipe Cleaners
- Gems
- Snowflake Mini Erasers or Beads
Benefits Of Alphabet Play Dough Mats
Some kids need extra encouragement to do learning activities and this can easily be done by adding a fun factor. Play dough alone can be a super fun activity that most children enjoy, so adding learning to this activity is perfect.
This is a fantastic set for a literacy center in a classroom or as an ABC activity at home.
More Benefits of Play Dough in the Classroom:
- Play dough is a fantastic way to strengthen fine motor skills, which helps with pre-writing skills.
- Play dough can be calming and stress relieving.
- Encourages development of hand-eye coordination.
- Excellent sensory play activity.
- Increases creativity and imagination.
- Will help with letter recognition and letter formation.
- Is a fun way to introduce beginning sounds.
If you’re ready to grab our FREE Winter Alphabet Play Dough Mats, then click on the large, yellow button below!
Then, hop on over to see our Mitten Pre-Writing Alphabet Tracing Cards!
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