Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with this DIY St. Patrick's Day Play Dough Activity Tray! Use it to practice counting, strengthen hand muscles and more, with your toddler, preschooler, and/or kindergartner. For our March tray, I grabbed a few clover shaped cookie cutters, gold coins, gems, pipe cleaners, and some pom poms. The St. Patrick's Day play dough has a natural, calming, peppermint scent that keeps kids calm and happy.
STRENGTHEN HAND MUSCLES
This St. Patrick's Day Play Dough Activity Tray is a great way to strengthen your child's fine motor skills. All of the smashing, pinching, rolling, and manipulating of the play dough will engage their hand muscles. This is important for mastering tasks like doing buttons, zipping, and holding a pencil properly for writing.
MATERIALS FOR ST. PATRICK'S DAY PLAY DOUGH ACTIVITY TRAY
The play dough is the main sensory tool for this sensory activity, so use a homemade recipe like I did, or buy some…either way! If you've never tried making homemade play dough, try this recipe! It's super soft, smells amazing, and it's non-toxic. I added a few drops of peppermint essential oil for a calming scent, gold glitter, and green food coloring to my homemade play dough. For this specific tray, I used clover shaped cookie cutters, pipe cleaners, pom poms, gold coins and gemstone beads. I also found a cute, wooden rolling pin from Hobby Lobby.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS
numbered cards (to practice counting)
glitter (to add to the play dough)
I had good luck at the Target dollar aisle and Dollar Tree for some of these items too! Those are always great spots to browse for play dough tray items!
*Use discretion with small objects/choking hazards for those younger kiddos!*
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DIFFERENT KINDS OF PLAY
There are so many different ways to play with the St. Patrick's Day Play Dough Activity Tray:
- comparing sizes of clovers
- making patterns with the coins and gemstones
- imaginary play with creating rainbows and leprechauns
- counting coins
- download play dough mats
Be creative, and have fun with it! Check out more of our play dough activity trays HERE!
Get more FREE St. Patrick's Day printable activities in Petunia's Pasture Resource Library! It is full of printables and activities created with the busy mom in mind. They require minimal set up and supplies, so that you can print them off on a whim, and keep your eager learner engaged.
