Playdough Power: Building social skills and language through playdough
Playdough is always a favourite and for a good reason. Everyone loves showing off their creations when playing with playdough, even the kids! There's guaranteed fun when squishing and squashing, whether homemade or pulled out of a tub, bouncy or soft, glittery or fragrant. There are so many variations I couldn't list them all!
But I have a particular reason why I love this activity so much with children. Although fine motor development is the aim of the game when children explore, have you noticed the atmosphere around the table?
Their social skills soar as they explain, "I'm making a tiny cat!" "I'm making a wheel. Look! It rolls!" "You have to squish it like this." "I'm making cookies!" "Can you please roll mine?" "It's a car!" "Meow!"
The possibilities of what children might say are endless, and I love how they demonstrate their language skills while being super creative. I've found some of the quietest children opening up, allowing us to listen and learn. They'll be calm but energetic, with unique ideas and explanations to teach you more about them. Of course, that's the power of play, where they demonstrate their understanding of the world, and we determine how to scaffold their learning. Their confidence grows as they problem-solve, but they ask for help, too, when they need it - essential life skills.
Scaffolding children's conversation simply means connecting what they already know to new information. So, when engaging in meaningful conversations through play, we can scaffold their learning with open-ended enquiries, leading to more exploration and discovery.
For example, after observing them, you could ask, "How shall we make your car roll?" "I wonder what would happen if you use this for your cookies."
The more new vocabulary we add at the right time, the more exposure they get. Helping them with spoken language supplements their literacy journey because written text starts to make more sense. Exploring new ideas becomes exciting, encouraging a better reading experience.
Playing with playdough has many benefits, including children naturally talking about their play and giving us cues on when to help build their language skills.
As 1.9 million children in the UK alone have speech and language challenges, we must support children to the best of our ability, and every little helps. Read more about this topic here.
Remember to offer playdough with various tools and objects to experiment with and enhance creativity. Whether it's spoons from the kitchen, objects of nature or toys to make tracks and prints - they'll be having a fantastic time creating and chatting. Playdough is a staple for your child's toy box or shelf for every season and theme, offering not just hours of fun but meaningful learning along the way.
