Grade: Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten

This is a fun way to practice the alphabet and to reinforce the sounds each letter makes. It's also a wonderful way to have a tactile experience, making the letters and animals out of PLAY-DOH Compound.

Instructions:
a.    Practice the alphabet with your students, and ask them to name an animal that begins with each letter.
b.    Ask each child to create an animal out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
c.    When the animals are completed, ask each child to say what letter her animal begins with. Then ask her to make that letter out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
d.    Invite your students to talk about their animals. Where do they live? What sounds do they make?
Further Study: Ask older students to write short stories about their animals.

Grade level: Kindergarten to 3rd Grade

Make a great impression on your class. Press PLAY-DOH Compound into animal print molds to create a wide, wild world of animal prints. It's a fun, tactile, and engaging way for children to learn that different animals leave different footprints.

Grades: Pre-Kindergarten to First Grade

Teach basic addition skills with this activity that makes math fun.

Instructions:
a.    Ask your students to make several large pancakes out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
b.    Using cookie cutters, ask each child to cut out one shape six times.
c.    Then ask them to create a "plus" sign, a "minus" sign, and an "equal" sign out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
d.    Have them create the numbers 1 through 6 out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
e.    Guide them in adding and subtracting their shapes. For example: 2 bunnies + 1 bunny = 3.
 

Hint: Begin by adding 1 to each number. Then move on to more complicated addition.

Grade level: Pre-Kindergarten to 1st Grade

Embark on a journey around the world, fueled by PLAY-DOH Compound and a child's imagination. Teach your students about the continents with a map of the world and seven different colors of PLAY-DOH Compound. See how geography becomes fun and easy to grasp -- literally!

Grade level: Pre-Kindergarten to 1st Grade

No child is an island -- but every child will love to learn about islands and peninsulas with the help of PLAY-DOH Compound. With the use of two different colors of PLAY-DOH Compound and some construction paper, learning about different types of landmasses becomes a fun game your students are sure to remember.

Grade level: Pre-Kindergarten to 3rd Grade

What's better than reading about different habitats like the ocean, the mountains, and the desert? Reinforcing these concepts with PLAY-DOH Compound! Children will love creating little shoebox dioramas of specific habitats, populated with indigenous animals and plants, all sculpted out of PLAY-DOH Compound.

Grade level: Kindergarten to 1st Grade

Teaching the "CVC" rule sounds like a lot of fun with PLAY-DOH Compound. Write down beginning and ending consonants, and your students can stamp out vowels made of PLAY-DOH Compound to create different three-letter words. Suddenly, learning about short vowel sounds becomes a game you will all love to play.

Grades: Preschool

Introduce children to the concept of different sizes. This activity also helps develop fine motor skills.

Instructions:
a.    Help your students create different shapes and sizes with PLAY-DOH Compound. Make a long snake and a short snake: a big ball and a small ball, etc.
b.    Creating different shapes with PLAY-DOH Compound helps you demonstrate the notions of tall, taller, tallest; big, bigger, biggest; small, smaller, smallest; and long, longer, and longest.
c.    You can use simple shapes like snakes and balls, or you can make animals and objects, possibly ahead of time, to illustrate the concept.

Part One
Grade: Pre-Kindergarten to First Grade

Asking children to retell a familiar story with PLAY-DOH Compound helps build oral comprehension and encourages teamwork.

Instructions:
a.    Explain to your class that you'll be telling them a story, and that afterwards, you'll see how well they listened.
b.    Read them a simple and familiar story like "The Three Little Pigs." Point out the important parts as you read it.
c.    Break the class into small groups and give each group some PLAY-DOH Compound to play with.
d.    Ask them to recreate the characters and objects from the book out of PLAY-DOH Compound.  
e.    Ask each group to retell the story, using the characters and objects they've created.
Further Study: Repeat this exercise on a weekly basis, first with simple stories, then with more and more complex stories.


Part Two
Grade: Pre-Kindergarten and Up

Creating a story around an animal, person, or object she's made out of PLAY-DOH Compound engages a child's imagination and helps build language skills and self-confidence.

Instructions:
a.    Ask each child to create an animal, person, or object out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
b.    Invite each child to “show 'n' tell” about the thing he or she has made. (Example: "This black cat is named Sophie. She loves milk and fish. She understands 26 languages and likes to purr.")
Further Study: Older kids can write their stories in a journal. Kids can also draw pictures starring their creations.
Optional: Take photos of the objects to illustrate the children's stories.

Grade: Pre-Kindergarten to First Grade

This activity helps children recognize letter shapes and sounds, and it teaches them specific word families. It also improves fine motor skills.

Instructions:
a.    Write a word family, like "-at," on the board.
b.    Sound it out with the children.
c.    Help each child build "-at" out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
d.    Write the letter "B" on the board, and have the kids make it out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
e.    Explain that when you put the "B" in front of "-at," you create the word "Bat." Sound it out together.
f.    Move on down the alphabet, spelling words like "cat," "hat," "mat," "pat," etc. Sound out each word, and help the children make the new letters, as needed.
g.    Continue with other word families, like "-an," "-it," etc.
Further Study: To help improve fine motor skills, have the children write the words on paper, too.

Grades: Pre-Kindergarten to First Grade

This activity helps kids identify parts of the human body, and it reinforces the fact that we are alike in many more ways than we are different.  

Instructions:
a.    Draw or hang up pictures of human faces.
b.    Ask the children to make a face out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
c.    Then draw or put up pictures of torsos, arms, hands, legs, etc.
d.    Ask the children to make these parts out of PLAY-DOH Compound too.
e.    Ask your class what each part of the body does.
f.    Put all the pieces together to build a person.
g.    Optional: You can ask the kids to mix and match their pieces for some extra fun. You can also repeat this activity with different animals.
Further Study: Ask your class to write a story about the person they created.

Grades: Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten
Teach your class how nature makes a rainbow -- then show them how they can make their own.

Instructions:
a.     Ask your students if they've ever seen a rainbow. Explain that rainbows always have the same colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
b.    Tell them that a rainbow occurs when sunlight shines through water droplets in the sky. (That's why they appear after the rain.)
c.    Ask the children to create their own rainbows out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
 

Further Study: Explain that the water droplets in the sky act like a prism. Hold an actual prism against a white wall or table and shine a flashlight through it. Tell the students that the water in the sky acts like this prism.

Grades: Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten
Teach your students about flowering plants while improving their fine motor skills and flexing their creative muscles.

Instructions:
a.    Show your students photos and drawings of different flowering plants.
b.    Point out the different parts of the plant: petals, leaves, stems, roots, etc.
c.    Ask your students to create flowers of their own using PLAY-DOH Compound.
d.    When they're done, ask each child to talk about his flower.
 

Further Study: Ask older students to write about their flowers. Take photos of the flowers to illustrate the stories.

Grades: Kindergarten to Third Grade

Introduce your students to great works of art, and encourage them to be artists, too. This activity also helps kids express how they are feeling through art.

Instructions:
a.    Hang up pictures of great works of art, especially self-portraits.
b.    Take a moment to tell the children a little bit about the pictures and the artists.
c.    Explain that a self-portrait is a picture an artist created of him or herself.
d.    Ask the students what they think the artists were thinking and feeling when they created their self-portraits. What do they think the artists were like?
e.    Ask the children to create their own self-portraits out of PLAY-DOH Compound.
f.    When they're done, ask the children to talk about their self-portraits.
g.    Take photos of the self-portraits. Print them out and hang them up in your classroom.

Grades: Preschool to Kindergarten

Explore the world of color with your students, and illustrate how primary colors combine to create secondary colors.

Instructions:
a.    Pass out pieces of yellow, blue, and red PLAY-DOH Compound to each child.
b.    Explain that these are primary colors, meaning they are not made by combining other colors -- but you can combine them to create many different colors.
c.    Show them different combinations, such as:
•    Yellow + blue = green
•    Yellow + red = orange
•    Red + blue = purple
d.    Ask them to combine small amounts of their own colors.
e.    Now they can create objects with their new colors.

Grades: Preschool to Kindergarten

Help children develop fine motor skills and identify basic shapes.
Instructions:

a.    Draw or cut out basic shapes.

b.    Ask the students to identify them.

c.    Lead them in making the shapes out of PLAY-DOH Compound.

d.    Optional: Put the shapes together to create objects. For example: a triangle and a semi-circle make a sailboat. Or an ice cream cone!

Grade level: 1st Grade to 2nd Grade

PLAY-DOH Compound really goes the distance when it's used to reinforce how to use a ruler. By making a colorful snake with PLAY-DOH Compound, children can practice measuring to the nearest inch. Their fun creation helps them gain confidence, and that goes a long, long way.

Grade level: Kindergarten to 3rd Grade

Give your students the universe by inspiring them to create their own. Introduce them to our solar system by helping them create planets and stars out of PLAY-DOH Compound. The possibilities for learning are infinite!

Grade level: Kindergarten to 1st Grade

Strike a chord with your students -- introduce them to written music with PLAY-DOH Compound. The treble clef and musical notes are no longer abstract concepts when you're sculpting them out of PLAY-DOH Compound. Play music while you and your students sculpt, and their imaginations will really sing.

Grades: Pre-Kindergarten to First Grade
Teach your students where their food comes from by helping them identify and better understand different fruits, vegetables, and other foods.

Instructions:
a.    Put up labeled photos of fruits, vegetables, a dairy cow, a beehive, fish, chickens, etc.
b.    Ask your students to tell you what everything is. Explain that milk comes from a cow, hens lay eggs, bees make honey, etc.
c.    Take a few minutes to talk about the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables. You can also point out that different foods are rich in different vitamins and minerals.
d.    Ask the children to make their favorite foods using PLAY-DOH Compound and/or to describe them.
e.    They can also compose their ideal meals using the foods you've discussed. Which foods do they like best and why?