St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Alphabet Mats
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Seriously, everyone loves play dough, right? The super cute clovers and rainbows on these free St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Alphabet Mats are fantastic for St. Patrick’s Day! Not only do the mats help kids practice the alphabet, but play dough has benefits all in itself. When learning can be combined with an inherently fun, hands-on activity I always consider it a win!
*Combine these with our St. Patrick’s Day Centers for TONS of learning fun!
St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Alphabet Printables
These printables are fun for St. Patrick’s Day and great to help kids practice their ABCs!
It is always extra fun to incorporate holidays into the theme of activities. This set is perfect for Preschool, Pre-K, and Kindergarten classrooms!
Each one of these full alphabet St. Patrick’s Day play dough mats has an uppercase and lowercase letter.
The pack page is 27 pages and includes every letter combination. Each page is also decorated with clovers and a rainbow.
How To Use The St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Mats
If you haven’t used play dough mats before, you are in for an exciting time!
Kids will love exploring with them, and you will be super happy about the fact that once they are ready, there is literally no more prep!
What I prefer to do is print out the set and laminate each one. If you are making individual sets for each kid, I have placed two mats, back to back, and laminated them together.
This will depend on how many kids you are creating these sets for and how often each letter will get used at one time.
The reason that I laminate the sheets is so that they are easy to clean, as the lamination makes it super easy to wipe the excess play dough off.
This also helps preserve the life of the mats. The lamination makes them last almost forever!
I like to show kids that they can fill the letters in multiple ways:
- Creating balls of play dough to make a dotted line inside the bubble letter
- Create snacks with the play dough to ‘write’ the letter
- Fill the letter completely using play dough and play dough tools
- Create a snake with the play dough and use a play dough knife to cut pieces to fill the letters.
Alternate Ideas:
- Play Dough tools can be used to ‘smash’ the play dough into the bubble letters, creating various textures on the letters
- These play dough mats can also be used with dry erase markers. Kids can use markers to create patterns inside the letters (polka dots, stripes, hearts, etc), color each letter in, or use the bubble letter as a template to write the letters.
Benefits Of Alphabet Play Dough Mats
As I mentioned above, it is beneficial to add a factor of fun to learning activities. This helps to encourage children into focusing on the learning activity. There is no shame in that, it is very common!
Play dough alone is a fun activity that most children respond well to, so throwing in some letters is an easy transition for both you and the kids!
These St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Mats are full of fun but full of benefits!
- Play Dough is a fantastic way to strengthen fine motor skills, which makes this a fabulous prewriting activity!
- Play dough can be calming and stress relieving.
- Play dough is an excellent activity to encourage the development of hand-eye coordination.
- Play dough is a fun sensory play activity.
- Play dough, as well as these play dough mats, can increase creativity and imagination.
- The ABC play dough mats will help with teaching or practicing letter recognition and letter formation.
- This is a fun way to introduce beginning sounds (can you think up words for each letter?)
These play dough mats are a wonderful way to encourage children to practice the alphabet in a fun and hands-on way. I am excited to use these as a center activity in the week leading up to St. Patrick’s Day!
Grab Your FREE Set
Ready to play? Grab some of your favorite play dough and print your free set of the St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Mats by clicking the large, yellow download button below!
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Thank you for the St. Patrick’s mats. It is going to be so nice to have such a large selection of mats so my kiddos don’t get tired of the same mat all year long!
Thank you for making countless teacher’s lives easier. Love your work. Smiles! Bobbi
Thanks, Bobbi! That was very sweet of you to say. We are so lucky to get to do the work that we do! Enjoy!