Valentine’s Day Play Dough Kit

Homemade play dough is a staple in my home and preschool program. It is one of our favorite learning materials and we are constantly coming up with new ways to play and learn with it. Today, I wanted to share our classroom-sized Valentine’s Day Play Dough Kit! This kit pairs perfectly with the rest of our Valentine-themed crafts and learning activities we do during the month of February!

*Pair with our Valentine’s Day Centers and Activities for Pre-K & Kindergarten!

Valentine’s Day Play Dough Kit

This play dough container is quite big – almost a foot wide! That means it can hold enough materials for several children to play with at once while also being compact and orderly.

I love that the children can feel empowered to put their materials away when they are done and that the sectioned container “presents” the materials similar to using a sectioned tray, without me having to set it up and put it away each time.

Materials in our Valentine’s Play Dough Kit:

• 1 batch chocolate play dough
• 1 batch vanilla play dough
• 3 gel food dye colors – pink, red, purple
• Flower and heart cookie cutters
• Heart gems
• Dyed barley for sprinkles
• Heart pom poms
• Artificial roses
• Red & white cupcake liners
• Wooden ladybug embellishments

You can use my recipes for homemade play doughs, or you can simply add some scent to commercial dough. Whatever works better for you!

To begin, I made the vanilla play dough and then kneaded in the gel colors afterwards, but that is definitely the harder way to go about things. I just didn’t want to make 4 different batches. I also like the marbled effect that results from not completely kneading the color all of the way through.

Add in whatever mix-ins and manipulatives you have on hand or can use for other activities. We’re going to use those gems and ladybugs for counting. The artificial roses will likely be used for a process painting activity later. The dyed barley was leftover from our ice cream play dough invitation and we like to use it as “sprinkles.”

RELATED RESOURCE: February Math and Literacy Clothespin Clip Cards for Kindergarten

How to Play

By providing different types of play dough and different manipulatives, children can find so many different ways to play. I’ll list a few of the ways we engaged with our Valentine’s Day Play Dough Kit, but your group will probably come up with completely different ways to play and that’s great!

Here are some of our favorite ways to play:

• Exercising our fine motor skills by using our pincer grip to pick up and delicately arrange the heart gems and ladybugs.
• Counting out the ladybugs as we divided them into several individual cupcake liners.
• Using our hand strength to flatten out the play dough without the use of rollers, and practicing our dexterity in rolling the dough into “rolls” and “balls.”
• Identifying different shapes using our cookie cutters and problem solving how to ensure we had enough dough to get the full shape.
• “Planting” the roses and discussing what types of things flowers might need.

Would your group enjoy playing with this play dough kit? What would you add or substitute in this classroom 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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