TURNING PLAY-DOH INTO A LITERACY ACTIVITY

If you know me, you know my love for Play-Doh runs deep. Yes, it can be messy, yes, it gets under your nails and on the bottom of shoes, but it takes a whole lot more than a little bit of extra cleaning to stress me out…especially when the pay-off is so high. This stuff is just so versatile!

MATERIALS:
• Play-Doh
• Post-It notes
• Marker, crayon, or pen

This week we were focusing on the letter Hh, and since these kiddos are 3, they need more than paper and pencil activities to engage them (then again, don’t we all?). So we took a preferred activity and tried to gently guide them towards turning their rolled “snakes” into letters.

Did they make letters the entire time? Nope, and that’s ok. Learning should be fun, especially for this age group who learns best through play.

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that at some point, Bianca had her lowercase letter h backwards, which provided an excellent opportunity to orient her to spatial concepts. Children frequently write or turn their letters backwards, and it’s considered developmentally appropriate until about the age of 8 (3rd grade). Think about the letters b, p, and d for a minute to get a better understanding. In reality, they look like the exact same letter, just oriented differently. Make sense now? It’s really a more common occurrence than you’d think, and hopefully this example helps you understand why.

What’s your most favorite creative way to play with, learn, and teach children their letters?