Need a fun play dough activity for your farm theme? Your little learners will love exploring with this fun farm theme play dough tray.
Your Preschool or Pre-K students will have a blast exploring and creating with this hands-on farm play dough activity!
Farm Play Dough Activity
Play dough is so much more than just fun, it provides plenty of academic value as well as educational benefits for young children.
When you provide your little learners with opportunities to use play dough daily, they’re developing important creativity and fine motor skills in fun and playful ways. Just rolling dough and pressing sticks and objects into the dough has many educational benefits for young children. You can find a list of how playing with play dough supports academic learning at the end of this post.
Farm Play Dough Tray Supplies
The following is a list of supplies you can use when setting up a fun and inviting farm play dough invitation in your own classroom.
- Play dough in a variety of colors (here’s my favorite play dough recipe)
- Craft Sticks
- Farm Animals
- Rolling Pins
- Vegetable Counters
- Chip and Dip Tray
- Farm Scene (I found this wood farm scene in the dollar section of my local red and white big box store)
These are just some suggestions to help you get started, you can choose the supplies you prefer or have readily available in your classroom.
Play Dough Invitation
You can use a chip and dip tray to quickly and easily set up your farm play dough invitation. These types of chip and dip trays can usually be found at your local dollar store.
Play dough invitations are designed to provide young children with open-ended experiences. There’s no right or wrong way to use the materials on the tray.
Check out this research-based, playful learning unit in our curriculum shop!
Farm Lesson Plan Bundle | Preschool and Pre-K
16 of my most popular farm theme activities, including fine motor, math, literacy, science, dramatic play and more!
To get started, just invite your little learners to explore the materials on the tray.
As your kids begin to interact with the play dough and materials on the tray, soon their creativity and imaginations will begin to take over. When young children are engaged in activities that invite them to be creative and use their imaginations, their attention spans will naturally begin to increase. Think about how much your kids can benefit from increased attention spans!
Open Ended Farm Play Dough Exploration
If you’re wondering what you should do if your students are using only some of the materials and not others — the answer is simple, let them to choose!
When it comes to mixing the different colors of play dough (gasp!) don’t worry, this process is all about creating with the materials, and has nothing to do with making keeping the colors of the dough separate.
When you allow young children the freedom to choose what to do with the dough and materials — you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how creative they can be when given a chance!
Here’s that list of educational benefits of play dough I promised you earlier — enjoy!
Creativity – Your kids can use their imaginations to create rather than follow a template or sample. Imaginative children are more likely to become problem solvers later in life.
Communication Skills – Your children can talk with their classmates in a relaxed environment which facilitates oral language development. Oral language development is directly related to reading scores later.
Farm Play Dough Educational Benefits
Small Group or Independent Work – Dough is perfect for young children to use independently, or in a small group.
Fine Motor Skills – Rolling the dough, pressing in gems and other materials is great for strengthening those important fine motor skills your kids will need for writing later.
