Your list of Christmas activities for preschoolers and kindergarten kids wouldn’t be complete without at least one of these Christmas playdough activities.
Below you’ll find some truly engaging Christmas play dough ideas, along with Christmas playdough recipes to make with the kids. Combining a fun and functional sensory activity with one of the kids’ all time favorite holidays – what’s not to love? The kids are going to have an absolute blast!
I love that so many early learning concepts can be practiced with the Christmas-themed playdough fun. Fine motor, literacy, sensory, and math skills are all touched on.
Related: Sensory Play
Since this is a collection of play dough activities for Christmas, you’ll find multiple links below. The links are underlined, blue text. Each link leads to a different play dough idea.
So read through all of the activity descriptions, decide which ideas you like the best, and click the links to read more details of each of those ideas.
Materials for the Christmas Play Dough Ideas
Before we jump into all the Christmas playdough activities, let’s talk supplies. Each activity and recipe shared below has its own set of materials, of course. But these are a good starting point (I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post):
- Store bought play dough (unless you want to make your own)
- Cookie cutters
- Natural items (twigs, etc.)
- Glitter
- Candy canes
- Flour
- Salt
- Oil
- Cream of tartar (some recipes call for it)
- Spices
- Food coloring
- Playdough tools
You might already have those materials in your kitchen or your supply closet! And keep in mind, you can tweak some of the supplies suggested in the collection below based on what you already have.
Benefits of Playdough This Christmas
I mentioned earlier that these playdough ideas have many learning opportunities. So I thought I’d take a moment to enumerate some of the benefits kids get from play dough.
Here are some of the early learning concepts kids can practice with the Christmas playdough activities and recipes shared below:
- Creativity
- Fine motor skills
- Hand-eye coordination
- Color identification
- Patterns
- Sensory exploration
- Descriptive vocabulary
- Calm down tools
- Shapes
- Early reading
- Following simple directions
- Imaginative play
As you can see, there are so many benefits to incorporating play dough into your Christmas lesson plans! And that list above isn’t an exhaustive one. You can add in even more learning to the play.
Christmas Playdough Activities
Okay, let’s get down to it! Remember that this is a collection, so there are multiple links below. I tried to line up the links to their corresponding images in the collages.
- Use these Christmas playdough mats to encourage creativity and practice fine motor skills. There’s even some early reading practice involved.
- Place out the materials for North Pole playdough play, and then let the children craft their own scenes of Santa’s home.
- Pair some natural items with chocolate reindeer play dough and watch as the kids create reindeer (and a variety of other creations).
- Encouragement shape identification practice with the ornament shape mats. They’re perfect with play dough, loose parts, and math manipulatives.
- Let the kids pretend to be Christmas bakers as they use this Christmas cookie play dough invitation.
- Make some Christmas-themed printable busy bag cards to use in conjunction with play dough. The simple instructions encourage beginning reading, too.
- Put those fine motor muscles to work with a Christmas chocolate maker busy bag. Your students pretend to be North Pole chocolatiers!
- Print another set of Christmas playdough mats for the kids. This set encourages them to extend the images using the dough.
Christmas Playdough Recipes
Now that you have some fun Christmas playdough activities, let’s talk recipes! Just like above, there are collages and links that correspond to the images. Click on the links for specific details regarding each recipe.
- Make The Sweet Smell of Christmas play dough recipe after reading a favorite Christmas book.
- Grab those cookie cutters and let the kids use this gingerbread playdough recipe to make their own gingerbread men.
- Use the candy cane scented play dough recipe as the base for a sensory writing tray.
- Add glitter to make this Christmas play dough recipe even more festive!
- Have the children make cinnamon play dough cookies with a sweet and simple playdough recipe.
- Choose one of these Christmas play dough recipes to make with the children, or take some time to make them all!
- Don’t stress if you don’t have cream of tartar, as this peppermint playdough recipe doesn’t need any.
- Retell a classic story after making this gingerbread scented playdough recipe with your students.
Now that you’ve seen all the Christmas playdough activities and recipes, which one are you going to try first?
Be sure to save this post for future reference. A Christmas Pinterest board or a Play Dough Pinterest board would be a good place to start.
Christmas Lesson Plans
Planning meaningful lessons for students week after week, all while balancing other teaching responsibilities and a personal life, can be a daunting task. That’s where Preschool Teacher 101 comes in to save you time!
We have hundreds of lesson plans, dramatic play packs, STEM challenges, digital games, and so much more! There’s even The Pack, our membership for preschool and kindergarten teachers who want to save even more.
Click on the image below to learn more about our Christmas lesson plans!
You can also find us on Teachers Pay Teachers.
More Christmas Sensory Activities for Kids
If the Christmas playdough activities are a hit with your students, here are some more ideas to try:
There are even more to be found in my Christmas sensory activities post! I hope you and the kids have a blast with everything.
Originally published November 30, 2014.
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