Engineering with Playdough!

Playdough is an absolute favourite in our learning space and our little ones just can’t get enough! We are always setting it up alongside different provocations in order to extend and challenge our little ones further each time. 😍

One of our lovely kaiako set up playdough with sticks outside and in no time there were many little learners gathered around. At first, some of them just pressed and rolled the playdough in between their hands but soon realised there were some great sticks just waiting on the table to use too. 🙌

“What could we do using the sticks and playdough together?”, our kaiako provoked and soon there was a lot of experimenting happening at the table. Some of our little ones chose to add pieces of playdough to a stick – like a lollipop, while others made little balls and pierced them through the stick – like a kebab. As they had more and more time to experiment, we could see their thoughts and ideas becoming more complex and in depth – with some of them starting to make shapes and even structures. 😊

Playdough is an amazing manipulative material for little hands and it can provide endless opportunities to foster creativity, imagination, thinking and problem-solving. Our little ones soon realised they had to be strategic in the way they created their structures in order to help them balance and stay upright. Some of them had to alter the size of the playdough joins, whilst others used trial and error with how the sticks were configured and the impact of this on stability. 👍😊

Regardless of their intentions with the playdough, they were using their fine motor skills throughout this play and in the process were strengthening their finger muscles. They were also exploring concepts such as size, stability, balance, measurement and identifying different shapes. When something was a bit tricky and they had to problem solve or persevere, the joy on their face once they had achieved what they wanted was priceless and uplifting - creating opportunities for self-achievement. 🙌😍

This learning experience with playdough and sticks is an easy and fun one to recreate at home. You never know – you might just be supporting a future engineer. 💕💕😊👩‍🔬👨‍🔬