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(Unit 2) Topic 2: Playdough

2 Clock Hours of Early Childhood Education

Toddlers Love Playdough 

​Topic 2 Page 5

Toddlers and playdough go together like peanut butter and jelly! 

Playdough is a fantastic open-ended activity to keep them learning and exploring. The necessities of playdough play include: a flat surface, playdough material, and tools such as cookies cutters, spreaders, plastic cutting tools and more. These are fantastic open-ended materials that allow children to explore and discover the texture and possibilities of playdough, but don't let that limit you!​

Toddlers are constantly learning about their surroundings including the people that are around them. Their social experiences are adding to their knowledge of their world and playdough provides an opportunity to really capitalize on this. Toddlers can work together to share, interact and create with the material. They may imitate their peers playdough play or recreate some of their favorite things.​

Building, squishing, and even mixing playdough colors are beneficial and important playdough activities. Toddler playdough play is usually a basic exploration of the materials, but it allows the children to learn quite extensively. Observations about the materials and the people they are playing with are learning experiences in themselves. When new materials are introduced it allows the children to scaffold their current knowledge to build new connections between concepts. Encourage this play and exploration to yield the best results for your group. 

Some more suggestions for toddler playdough play:

• Practice fork and spoon use with child-safe utensils
• Teach and practice colors using playdough
• Add playdough to other classroom materials to extend play
• Use playdough for a calming activity
• Alter the materials offered with playdough to change the experience
• Use playdough with unexpected materials
• Ask guiding questions during playdough play
• Let the toddler guide the experience as much as possible

Note:  Please provide appropriate supervision to the children in your care when completing all activities. You will need to decide what types of activities are safe for the children in your care.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when providing art and sensory experiences for children.

Toddlers require special caution, only use non-toxic materials, and do not allow toddlers to put things in their mouths that are a choking hazard. ​​

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