Early Learning Ideas

Engaging Activities for Little Learners

  • Home
  • Math
  • Literacy
    • Name Activities
    • Alphabet Activities
    • Beginning Sound Activities
    • Rhyming Activities
    • sight word activities
    • Book Ideas
  • Fine Motor
    • Fine Motor
    • Playdough
    • Sensory play
  • Science
  • Dramatic Play
  • Art & Crafts
    • Art Ideas
    • Craft Ideas
  • Themes
  • Seasonal
    • Beginning of School Year
    • Christmas
    • Easter
    • end of school year
    • fall
    • Halloween
    • Mother’s Day
    • spring
    • St. Patrick’s Day
    • summer
    • Thanksgiving
    • Valentine’s Day
    • winter
You are here: Home / Themes / All about Me / How to Make a Fun Playdough tray for your All About Me Theme

How to Make a Fun Playdough tray for your All About Me Theme

Pin2K
Share3
Tweet
2K Shares

Put together a playdough tray for your all about me theme.  Your kids will love playing with these materials during the first week of school or any time of year.


Are you looking for a great playdough activity for the first week of school?  This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme.  Your kids will love this fine motor activity.  Kids can make portraits (faces or full-bodies) they can just have fun, making open-ended creations with their playdough.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

Every Playdough Tray Needs Playdough

It was fun to make playdough for this tray and try to make some colors to represent several different skin tones.  I used my quick playdough recipe to make all of the colors.

The rich dark brown playdough is a favorite that I have made for several different playdough trays. I made the light brown by adding a bit less blue and red food coloring in the brown recipe.  To get the peachy color I used a little yellow and red food coloring as well as some white tempera paint.  The beige color on the left is a mixture of the peachy dough and a brown dough.

Don’t stress yourself out too much with this.  One of my combinations of paint and food coloring produced a dough that looked like something that would only be found on a corpse.  My husband and I got a good laugh about that one.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

Normally, I cringe a little bit when kids mix playdough colors, but I think it’s pretty cool to mix these colors.  After all, there are LOTS more than 4 colors of skin in the world.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

Playdough Tray Supplies

I think that it is always fun to look through the supply closet to find some goodies to add to a playdough tray.  For this tray, I tried to find some things that would help kids make a self-portrait.

I know that COVID has thrown a wrench into a lot of things.  If your kids can’t share supplies, don’t worry.  You can use the ideas below to create individual playdough kits for your kids.

I found some yarn in a bunch of natural colors.  I cut them into strips that can be used for hair or for other details.  It’s fun to add some unnatural colors as well.  It’s not uncommon to see someone with bright pink, blue or purple hair when we are out and about.  Let them experiment.

Beads can be used as eyes, can form mouths or any kind of details that kids what to add to their creation.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

Dig through your toy box and you might be able to find some cool pieces and parts to add to the tray.  I was excited when I found this great selection of plastic doll shoes.  They are a perfect addition to an all about me theme activity.  You might be able to find little plastic phones, bags, blowdryers from kids’ playsets.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

I also added a variety of googly eyes, foam shapes, and some wooden ice cream spoons.

You can really add anything to your tray.  Here are some additional items that you can add.

  • fabric scraps
  • doll hair
  • ribbon
  • sequins and baubles
  • toothpicks
  • spools

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

Let Them Create

Now that you have filled up a tray, you can stand back and let kids create.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

They might make faces, they might make entire bodies….

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

…or they might just have fun playing.

This fun playdough tray is perfect for your all about me theme. Use these ideas during the first week of school or any time of year. Your #preschool #prek or #kindergarten kids will love this fine motor activity. They can make 3D portraits. Kids can make faces, bodies, or can just have fun, open-ended creations with their #playdough

I hope that have fun creating a playdough tray for your all about me theme.

children children lift the flap class book

 

 

Pin2K
Share3
Tweet
2K Shares
The Best Way to Use Alphabet Dot Letters: 20 Fun Ideas
How to Set up a Weather Station Dramatic Play Area

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

I accept the Privacy Policy

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest

Looking for something??

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.
Use these free printable nature scavenger hunt books to encourage kids to write, draw, and read while exploring their world. Perfect for pre-k, preschool or kindergarten age kids. Use the free printables in the classroom, on the playground, during nature walks or hikes, on camping trips, in the backyard, or during summer camp. Use this emergent reader for your plant and seeds theme, spring theme, and pond theme unit and lesson plans. #preschool #preschoolactivities
Alphabet activities such as making letter collages or using letter mats are a great hands-on way to teach letter identification and reinforce letter-sounds. Here are over 200 material ideas that you can use for your collages or letter mats. A printable reference list or art and other materials is included. Better than worksheets, these are perfect hands-on activity for your preschool and pre-k classroom or lesson plans. Your young children will love this sensory learning opportunity. #preachool

Available in the Store

Kids love these hole punch activities. Use the printables to build fine motor skills, for hand strengthening, and to improve hand-eye coordination in a fun and exciting way. Perfect for your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, special education and occupational therapy classroom. The printables include shapes and many themes and seasonal printables to use during spring, summer, winter, and fall. #finemotor #finemotorskills #preschool
Use these 11 different printable name puzzles with your preschoolers for name and literacy activities. Find ideas for the whole year! Perfect for your preschool or kindergarten classroom, or at-home learning or homeschool. Teach your kids to spell their names, construct their names, and the beginning steps to writing their names with these hands-on activities. Make learning fun in fall, winter, spring, & fall with themes from pumpkin, Thanksgiving, caterpillar, snowman, and many more!
There are so many ways that your kids can work on name practice with these editable name activity mats. Perfect for early childhood, preschool, and pre-k classroom, this is a fun way to work on name recognition, the alphabet, letter sounds, spelling their names, handwriting practice, fine motor skills...etc.. You can even include pictures. Use for back to school, the beginning of the school year, an all about me theme unit or lesson plans. #preschool #nameactivities #backtoschool
Use these 1-20 number activity mats to help your kids in preschool, pre-k and kindergarten learn counting, number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and number sense.  The mats are a great multi-sensory tool that your kids will love. There are so many ways to explore numbers on just one page. Use playdough to form numerals, trace the dotted numbers, represent the number with finger-counting cards, ten frame, and build the number with counting cubes. #preschoolmath #prekmath #kindergarten
Use these CVC Beginning Sound Clip cards to help your kids hear and see the beginning sounds in words. They will love this hands-on early literacy activity...perfect for teaching early literacy concepts in your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten classroom. 17 word families are included. Looking for ideas for teaching rhyming, letter sounds, phonemic awareness, and phonological awareness? These activities are perfect for your literacy centers as independent and small group activities.
These rhyming clip cards will help your kids see and hear rhymes in simple CVC words. Kids love clipping clothespins on the rhyming words in this activity. Perfect for small group or independent activities in your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, or SPED classroom. An engaging way to teach rhyming, early literacy concepts, and phonological awareness to young children. #rhymingactivities

Search by Category

Free ABC Clip Cards
  • Contact
  • About Me
  • Archive
  • FAQ
  • Disclosures
  • Privacy Policy
  • Blog

Copyright © 2021 · Early Learning Ideas by Jennifer Hier