Triangle Sand Play Dough

(Open Ended Play)

In preparation for today’s triangle shape and sand theme, we experimented with a new-to-us dough this morning… sand play dough!

Materials:

-play dough

-sterilized beach sand in a container

-3 triangle shape (2 of Hape blocks and 1 of Fisher Price block) in different sizes and colors

-a rolling pin

-a tray

Instruction:

-present the materials in front of your toddler

-let your toddler to play freely

The first Y did was sprinkling the sand on top of the play dough. Oh how cute (sorry I might be biased). Is it just me who love to watch as those tiny fingers sprinkle little things? Anyway, sprinkling small items is great exercise for the fingertips, so apart from lovely to see, she was exercising her fine skill.

She pressed her first triangle into the ball dough while shouted “triangle!” She sprinkled some more sand on top before finally poured the whole sand out of the container over the ball dough. She then spread the dough using rolling pin and stamped on her triangles. Usually she would let her pressed shapes overlap with each other, but she kept them at a distance today. After a while I just realized she was planning to make a puzzle block. She made the print on the dough using 3 shapes of triangles and then put her blocks back on top its matching prints.

She gathered the dough. By now, it turned out soft and squishy but with lots of grit and weight to it, and it resembles beach sand in green color just perfectly. The texture was really, really fun to play with.

She began to fill layer and layer of dough into the blue Fisher Price triangle shape. After a while, she said “ice cream, yum yum yum!” Oh Dear, she saw the triangle as an ice cream cone! She lifted it up, pretended to smell and lick it. Ah, my heart melt. She took her time to pretend-savor her ice cream, even sprinkled some sand as topping.

It was tricky to take the dough out of the buckets, she found that using her fingertips to loosen the outer edges made it doable. She soon made another cone of ice cream, and another, and even another again. Sometimes she offered me and I pretend to lick it while she looked at me with amusement. On her final ice cream she added the small triangle. Then she asked for “wash” meaning the play time was over.

Later on in the evening, Y asked if she could have her new play dough set up to the bedroom.  She proudly made an ice cream in front of her dad – until it was time to sleep.  I’d say sand play dough is a hit.

#triangle #shape #toddler #sand #playdough #icecream