When I first began this 12 Days of Christmas Playdough series, I had so many ideas that I wanted to share. Unfortunately, there’s so little time at this time of year, and I’m going to take my own advice from a recent post The ABCs of a Meaningful and Stress Free Christmas with Young Kids, and eliminate extra stresses.
So – instead of doing 7 more playdough posts, I decided to compress the remaining days into 1 more fabulous playdoughy post.
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Today’s jam-packed post includes 7 new days of Christmas Playdough ideas, as well as links to our first 5 days.
New days include: Gingerbread House Playdough, Candy Cane Playdough, Christmas Shortbread Baking Station, Rudolph Playdough, “Little Blue Truck” Playdough, Textured Christmas Playdough, and Boxing Day Surprise Playdough.
Can you say Wow?! That’s a lot of dough! LOL
Basic Recipe for all Christmas Playdoughs:
- 2 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup salt
- 2 tsp. cream of tartar
- 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 2 cups water
Preparation:
Mix all the dry ingredients well in a pot. Add the oil and water and mix well. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the dough is sticky but not wet.
Remove the dough to a cutting board and let it cool for a minute or two. Knead the dough until smooth. Now is the time to add in food colouring, oils and extracts for scents, and/or sparkles. Store the playdoughs in separate airtight plastic bags or containers when not in use.
Gingerbread House Playdough Invitation
Special Supplies:
- Light brown coloured playdough – even better if you use our Gingerbread Scented Playdough recipe from Day 2 – and white playdough for “icing”
- Small empty and clean milk carton
- Decorative items that might go on a gingerbread house (we used green and red glass beads, candy-looking erasers, and plastic candy canes)
Set Up and Play:
To get my son started with this activity, I asked him to smell the gingerbread playdough and reminded him of the time we made gingerbread houses (read that post here).
I gave him the milk carton and suggested that if he wanted, he could make another gingerbread house out of playdough.
Next, I showed him the white playdough and suggested that it could be icing, and I pointed out the decorative items and encouraged him to decorate his house with them. He decided himself to add in some Christmas lego pieces!
Candy Cane Playdough Invitation
Special Supplies:
- Red playdough – even better if you use our Peppermint Scented Playdough from Day 2!
- A variety of plastic candy canes
Set Up and Play:
Onetime really enjoyed just pressing the canes into the playdough and making imprints. He also really seemed to enjoy the minty scent of this dough!
Wouldn’t it be fun to do some real candy cane math after playing with this playdough? Check out this post from The Elementary Math Maniac for great ideas!
Christmas Shortbread Playdough Station
Special Supplies:
- White playdough – even better if you add some Sugar Cookie 3 Bottles 1/2 FL Oz Each (15ml) Premium Grade Scented Fragrance Oil (just remember, this makes the dough inedible)
- A variety of baking implements including plastic knives, a roller, Christmas cookie cutters, small pie tins, etc.
- Decorative items that look like they could be candies and cherries (e.g. white and red beans/lentils, red and green glass beads etc.)
- Coloured rice to look like sprinkles and a little shaker bottle (If you haven’t made coloured rice before, it’s super easy! Find our instructions at the bottom of this post.)
Set Up and Play:
All I did was place the dough on an old baking sheet along with the sprinkles, cookie cutters and decorative items and Onetime started “baking!” Sometimes simple is best!
At one point, I talked to him about how my Nanny used to put green and red cherries in the middle of her shortbread cookies, and he started using the beads too.
If your child is inspired to do some real baking now, be sure to read our Kids in the Christmas Kitchen post for simple recipes and tips.
Rudolph Inspired Playdough
Special Supplies:
- Brown playdough
- Brown pipecleaners to suggest antlers
- Googly eyes
- Red pompoms or beads for a nose
- Reindeer cookie cutters
- Bells for Rudolph’s reins (optional)
- Plastic reindeer (optional)
Set Up and Play:
Display the dough with all the items and sit back and see what your child makes of it! You could even surreptitiously play “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” in the background if you wanted! Or read the story earlier in the day.
Onetime’s Rudolph explorations made me giggle – just look at the lopsided googly eyes! Tee hee! So cute!
Little Blue Truck Book-Inspired Playdough
Special Supplies:
-
- Green and blue playdough (we used Wilton’s Kelly Green and Royal Blue for ours)
- A truck cookie cutter and a couple different tree shaped cookie cutters
- Tags with the numbers from 1 to 5 written on them
- You could also have a string of pretend plastic Christmas lights to decorate trees and or white playdough for snow
- Little Blue Truck’s Christmas
book
Set Up and Play:
I had to make up a playdough invitation for one of my favourite kids’ Christmas books, Little Blue Truck’s Christmas. If you’re not familiar with this series, be sure to read our review of the book here.
Basically, I put out the supplies for my son and watched to see what would happen.
When he saw the 5 tags and the blue truck, he said immediately, “It’s Blue!” and started cutting Christmas trees out and sticking the tags onto them. Fun ensued!
Textured Christmas Playdough
Special Supplies:
- Green, Red, or White Playdough
- Green or red lentils or both
- White kidney beans
- Red and Green (or multicoloured) rice (find our simple recipe at the bottom of this post)
Set Up and Play:
These are just different ideas for creating textured Christmas playdoughs. Onetime really enjoys using these every now and then for a change. To make these doughs, you add the rice, lentils or beans into the dough after it’s cooled down.
You can add them onto the outside of the dough and let your child play with the dough until it’s mixed in, or you can give your child the dough and the texture materials on the side, and see how they add them in.
Onetime had a blast pulling the white beans out of the red dough shown above! Great fine-motor practise!
Boxing Day Surprise Playdough
Special Supplies:
- Whatever colour playdough you like
- A variety of Christmas themed/coloured objects/ornaments to hide inside
Set Up and Play:
Form your playdough to look like a gift box. Hide all the objects in the center of the dough. Present it to your child and invite them to “unwrap it!” Sit back and watch their delight as they start discovering all the fun “gifts” inside!
This was a huge hit with Onetime! Even after he unwrapped and found all the hidden objects, he continued playing and hiding his own little surprises for me!
That’s it for Days 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12: Christmas Playdough Invitations to Play.
If you missed the first 5 days, be sure to check them out:
Day 1: North Pole Inspired Playdough
Day 2: Heavenly SCENTED Christmas Playdough
Day 3: Holy Night Nativity Playdough
Day 4: Christmas Tree Learning Playdough
Day 5: Christmas Wreath Playdough and CD Craft
If you’re looking for other Christmas kids’ crafts and activities, check out our Pinterest board: Follow One Time Through’s board Christmas on Pinterest.
To find even more fun and educational activities as well as positive parenting tips, follow us on Facebook, and Twitter.
Have a wonderful doughy X-Mas!
Thanks for featuring my bingo cards!