Playdough Power

Squishing, rolling, sculpting, molding . . . Young children love to play with playdough, and playdough play is a great way to support their learning. It benefits children socially, creatively, and physically while building language and literacy, science, and math skills—all at the same time! Homemade or out of the can, this preschool staple can provide hours of fun and learning at home. All you need are a clear surface, a few kitchen utensils, and lots of time to play.

What Children Learn

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At home or at school, playdough play supports development and learning in many areas. When children use playdough, they explore ideas and try different approaches until they find one that works. They compare and contrast objects (“Mine’s a fat pancake and yours is skinny”), actions (“No, don’t cut it! This is how you scrape it”), and experiences (“We’re not making a snake, we’re making a road”). In experimenting with playdough, children use initiative and show curiosity, and they analyze and solve problems.

Social and Emotional Development
When children create with playdough, they gain a sense of competence (“I’m good at rolling the dough”) and feel pride in their accomplishments (“Hey, I made a dog”). Pounding, flattening, and squeezing playdough are healthy and safe outlets for extra energy and strong feelings. When children seem stressed or angry, teachers often steer them toward playdough. You can do this at home as well.
Playdough time is a social time, when kids talk about what they’re making and how. Re-create this atmosphere at home by inviting siblings or playmates and including yourself in the play. Make comments about their work (“You cut it again”). Ask questions that encourage children to describe and think about what they are doing (“What does this do?”). Connect their play and the real world (“Can you make a red tomato? A green one might not be ripe”). Children learn to cooperate with others (“I can help you make your car”) and observe and compare others’ actions with their own (“I’m rolling my dough too”). Interactions like these contribute to social and emotional development, helping to prepare children for success in school and in life.

Creativity and Imagination
With playdough, young children express their ideas through art and make-believe play. At the same time, they learn symbolic thinking by pretending the playdough represents something else (“That thing with the antlers is a moose”). Take 3-year-old Anna. As she plays, she creates various objects and gives names to her creations:

Anna squeezes a piece of playdough and rolls it back and forth between her hands. “I made a worm!” she exclaims. Then she makes another long object and places it on top of the first one. “I made another worm—a bigger one!” Then Anna squishes some playdough together: “There’s a turkey sandwich for you.” Next, she rolls a ball of dough around, pounds it down on the table, and sticks several plastic knives vertically into the pile. “Look, a birthday cake with candles!” she declares. She pokes the pile with a spoon, raises the spoon to her mouth, and pretends to eat. “Yummy!” she says.

When Anna makes her cake and eats it too, she is engaging in simple pretend play. Your child might imitate the actions of alligators, airplanes, or tigers. Or pretend to make tortillas, dumplings, or pizza.
Older preschoolers—say, 4- or 5-year-olds—often make detailed playdough creations. They invent complex play themes together and cooperate in elaborating on and extending the scenarios. They may imagine themselves to be construction workers building a highway, prehistoric hunters pursuing a woolly mammoth, or pastry chefs baking and selling cookies, cupcakes, and donuts at a bakery. You can join in their pretend play too.

Language and Literacy
         Through playdough play at home, children practice listening to and talking with friends, siblings, and adults (you!). Materials like playdough help children build their vocabulary when they explain what they are doing. For example, when a child yells, “Chop!” as she brings down the plastic knife, she uses just the right word to describe her action.
         Children use language to invent stories about their playdough creations. You may notice your child using facts or ideas from books you’ve read to him. Children also refer to events or images in their everyday lives (“This is a burrito like we had at lunch”).
         When the two of you together make a batch of playdough, your child learns about print and why people write. Following the recipe helps him connect written words and spoken words and learn that writing can be used for different purposes—in this case, telling you how to make playdough. Encourage him to roll snakes and use them to form letters. Discuss action words like pound and slice and descriptive words like mushy and sticky.
         These types of experiences help children learn new words and communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively—skills they will need when they learn to read and write in the primary grades.

Science
Young children learn about science through hands-on experiences—observing, thinking, and talking about how materials feel and how they change. You can encourage children to think like scientists by having them add sawdust or sand to playdough and then talking about how their action changed the dough. Introduce words like texture, grainy, smooth, and lumpy.
Your child might exclaim, “I’m making this flat!” as she pushes down on playdough with the palm of her hand. Or she may say, “I’m making it soft,” as she adds water to dry playdough to make it more pliable. When you ask, “What do you think would happen if you added too much water?” you are helping her understand the scientific concept, cause and effect.

Math
         Invite your child to measure and count while the two of you make playdough. He will learn about measurement by filling the cup and comparing the size of teaspoons and tablespoons, and about counting as he adds the water.
         Children note changes in shape and size as they comment on, compare, and contrast with one another the objects they make (“I made a triangle” and “Mine is a tiny ball and yours is big”). Others notice who has more or less playdough. Ask your child to count how many pieces she is making or arrange her creations by their size or color.
         These play experiences encourage children to practice counting, learn about shapes (geometry) and how they relate to each other (spatial sense), and practice sorting and classifying. They are mathematical ways of thinking that will prepare them to learn more complex math concepts in the coming years. Encourage your young child to think mathematically by asking questions: “What shape is that?” “Which snake is longer?” “How many pieces do you have now?”

Physical Development
Finally, while messing around with playdough, children use the small muscles in their fingers and hands. They use hands, fingers, and tools to pound, push, poke, shape, flatten, roll, cut, and scrape. Through these manipulations, children develop eye-hand coordination—the ability to match hand movement with eye movement—and gain strength and improve dexterity in their hands and fingers—critical areas of physical development for writing, drawing, and other purposes.

Playdough is a powerful learning tool for many reasons. And when you play at home with children and playdough, you’ll discover the most important reason of all: it’s just plain fun for everybody.

These two recipes are from The Cooking Book: Fostering Young Children's Learning and Delight, by Laura J. Colker. It's available from the NAEYC store [2].

(This article is adapted from “Playdough: What’s Standard about It?” by Mallary I. Swartz, published in the March 2005 issue of Young Children (volume 60, number 2)).

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