The textured rainbow playdough is a great sensory activity to add to your list of St. Patrick’s Day activities for preschoolers! Students will love getting to create and play with this colorful play dough recipe.
Encourage sensory exploration, vocabulary development, math skills, and so much more with this rainbow playdough. The little bits of “confetti” really add a unique touch to the experience.
In addition to St. Patrick’s Day, this rainbow playdough idea can be added to your next rainbow theme. Or integrate it into your spring lesson plans. You have a multitude of options for it!
Related: Sensory Play for the Entire Year
Towards the end of winter, I start craving lots and lots of color. Maybe it’s because I’m tired of the bleakness of winter. Or maybe it’s just because I know spring and St. Patrick’s Day are right around the corner. This confetti rainbow play dough activity came into being because we just wanted some color!
Textured Rainbow Playdough
I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Materials we used
Homemade play dough
Food coloring
Barley
Colorful glass gems
Pipe cleaner pieces
Gold coins
How we made the confetti play dough
I started off by making The Imagination Tree’s white play dough. The kids and I had different plans for that play dough at first. We didn’t like our first creation, but we loved the white play dough. So we decided to use it to make our rainbow confetti version! Once the play dough was cooled, we added a little bit of green food coloring.
The kids knew they wanted to break into some of the sensory materials I’d dyed in rainbow colors. They settled on the rainbow barley I’d made for a different activity. To make the colorful barley, I split a few bags of old barley into seven containers. Then I added food coloring (nothing else) and mixed up each color. In some cases, I added more food coloring for stronger colors. Twodaloo created some gorgeously colored barley using a different technique. Next time, I’m going to try her way to compare the results!
Related: Easter Playdough Mats
So the kiddos kneaded lots of colorful barley into the green play dough. Then we set about finding little bits and bobs to add to our play dough tray. I grabbed random items out of our craft closet that made me think of St. Patrick’s Day. Obviously, any loose parts that kids are interested in could be added to the play dough invitation.
What the kids did
Once everything was ready, the kiddos jumped in. I thought they’d immediately take apart the ball of play dough, but they had fun exploring it that way for a while. They decided to make a pig from Angry Birds (because the play dough was green, they told me). I loved watching them work together and problem solve with this! Making the pig’s snout required a lot of discussion between them.
Related: Unicorn Play Dough
From there, they went on to see how many gold coins they could shove onto the ball of play dough. They also had fun create a random monster out of it. Then they moved onto smaller items like rainbow cookies and the like. Because we’d added so much rainbow barley to the play dough, it was rather messy! Not all of the barley stayed inside the play dough as the kids manipulated it. But they had a blast, and that’s what matters!
Do you think your kiddos would enjoy our confetti rainbow play dough?
Preschool Lesson Plans You Should Check Out
Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes book suggestions, printable plans, over 30 learning activities (whole group, small group, and centers) related to the theme, and corresponding printables.
Grab the Rainbow Preschool Lesson Plans and the St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Lesson Plans
You can also find us on Teachers Pay Teachers
Leave a Reply