Making Our Own Playdough

Making Our Own Playdough

Playdough is one of our basic play materials in Nenagh Childcare Centre, we get through tons of it!

Playdough is so versatile, we can use as a tool to discover colour and texture, it can be therapeutic – the conversations that take place while the children squash and squeeze the playdough, are wonderful.

We also use it to encourage independence. Our older children can even make their own. We received a gift of doTERRA wild orange essential oil from one of our mums and today the children enjoyed making wild orange playdough. The classroom was filled with the wonderful uplifting aroma of oranges.

Adding fragrant essential oil adds another sensory interaction to making and playing with playdough. It is also of course natural and totally nontoxic.

Our older children can use playdough to develop those skills necessary for school readiness.

Playdough can be snipped, made into letters, used with tweezers and pencils. Children can practice their creativity - making sculptures, their counting - making buns and sharing them out, learning about simple fractions – half and whole, the list is endless!

The beauty of home-made playdough is, it costs very little and is very easy to make.

DIY Basic Playdough Recipe

• 2 cups of plain flour

• 1 cup of salt

• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

• Warm water to mix

You can add texture by adding lentils, rice etc.

Sometimes changing the flour to rice flour gives a different consistency.

You can add food colouring or play paint to give colour and don’t forget those essential oils for those therapeutic aromas while the children play.

Farmyard in your School Yard

Today we had a visit from the pet farm. The children all took part from our very youngest children to our oldest pre-schoolers. Their level of involvement of course depended on their ages.

Fern brought us a selection of animals – Simon the sheep who had his own little lead, guinea pigs (patch caused great excitement when he made a bid for freedom), chicken, ducks, a cockerel, some rabbits and 2 pygmy goats.

Some children were initially afraid of the animals, but with gentle coxing, they came around and we could see their confidence growing. The children were so gentle and even the smallest children understood the need to be gentle and use gentle touches.

Aside from the absolute delight on the children’s faces as they took turns to stroke and hold the animals, Fern was able to discuss animal welfare issues, she talked about the importance of caring for our animals and how best to look after them.

Talking about animals with children provides great opportunities to talk about life in general. One small child talked about how his cat had died. This brought up a discussion about life and death, the children showed great empathy and were able to talk about other times in their lives they felt sad.

The emerging curriculum discusses the need for children to have meaningful, hands on experiences.

We could have talked about a farm, shown them pictures of farm animals and discussed how to look after animals but this would not have had the same learning impact or have as much enjoyment for the children as bringing the farm to them.

A Sense of Belonging to Nenagh

Having a sense of Identity and Belonging is an important part of a child’s social and emotional development. We all need a sense of who we are and where we come from.

The children in Grasshopper room have taken the theme of ‘where we live’ and thought about all the elements of living in Nenagh, the purpose of some of its features and the people who live there.

It all started with a postcard from Lithuania!

A child who had left the centre to return home sent a postcard to the children telling them about his new school. The children thought about what they would tell children about where they live and their school.

We made contact with Anabla Preschool in Killarney and the children wrote letters and drew pictures for the children. They went to the post office each bought a stamp and posted their letters. There was great excitement when they received postcards in return.

When we looked at people in the community who help us, the children spoke about the doggy doctor – someone we had not expected to be important to them. Catherine the vet came for a visit and bandaged my dog Betty much to the entertainment of the children. She also brought Twitch a jack Russel with her, who only has one eye. The children were really interested, and amazingly almost everyone in Nenagh has a dog with only one eye!

Even the plants we gave our mammies on Mother’s Day came from a visit to the Community Gardens, one of the places identified by the children. The children saw what had been planted, talked about growing things and came back to the Centre to grow pansies in pots.

The best thing about this project is the children are driving it themselves. They are choosing what interests them, who they would like to visit, where they would like to go. I watched the children make a post office in the home area, folding paper to fit in different sized envelops, discovering which paper made the best stamps and how to stick them – all spontaneous learning opportunities instigated by the children.

So, when they come home and tell you they did nothing………