Toy Spotlight: Play Dough
Play dough is one of the most versatile toys for building speech and language skills with young children. If you already have play dough at home, there are many ways to use it during play with your child. We love it because play dough holds a child’s attention, allows opportunities for building fine motor skills, provides sensory input, and encourages communication development when paired with the right activities. In this post we will break down specific ways to support your child’s speech and language skills with play dough.
Children learn best through play, especially when they are allowed to take the lead. Child-led play provides adults with opportunities to acknowledge the child’s ideas and actions, provide positive feedback, and assist the child in building their resilience when a task gets hard.
Modeling Verbs
Verbs are a critical component of language development, and are often overlooked when young children begin speaking. Using nouns like names of animals or foods is important, but we also have to provide early communicators with ways to talk about actions.
Roll, cut, shape, pull, push, stretch, squish, poke
Adding other toys to your play dough can provide even more opportunities to use action words. Try bringing a car or animal to the table (wood or plastic works best). By adding other objects, we have opportunities to model an even wider variety of vocabulary. The cars can drive over the play dough making a bumpy road, go under a play dough bridge, or get stuck in play dough mud. With animals, the play dough can be their food, a place to sleep, or even clothing.
With Vehicles: drive, stuck, pull, crash, fall, smash,
Let’s drive! Oh no, it’s stuck! Let’s pull it out. Don’t crash!, It’s falling,
With Animals: eat, stomp, jump, run, cover, sleep
Let’s eat! Want some more? Let’s stomp! The puppy is jumping! Can we cover him up? Good night puppy! Time to sleep.
Practicing Expanding Phrases and Sentences
If your child is using single words or short phrases, try modeling just above their current level. For example, if your child usually uses single words, model 2-3 word phrases. If your child mostly uses 2-3 words, use 4-5 word sentences when talking with them. When you are using play dough for child-led play, you can describe what you see your child doing, or expand on what they say by adding 1-2 additional words. If your child says “Jump!” you can expand that and respond with “The puppy is jumping!”
2-3 Word Phrase Ideas
Let’s____. (Let’s go, Let’s jump over. Let’s push it.)
Go ____. (Go under. Go over it. Go this way. Go faster.)
4-5 Word Sentence Ideas:
The ___ is ___. (The puppy is hungry. The car is slow. The play dough is sticky.)
Like/Don’t Like (The puppy likes to eat! I like to roll it. You like driving on play dough.)
Building Describing Skills
We can use play dough to practice using adjectives. Describing actions and objects is an important expressive language skill, which we expect children to use more independently as they reach preschool and kindergarten age. Adjectives help children be more specific when sharing their ideas. Try modeling adjectives like these during play with play dough.
Talk about the size or shape of the play dough
Big, small, tiny, long, short, round, etc.
Describe how it looks and feels
Purple, bumpy, soft, smooth, flat, cold, warm, etc.
Compare and contrast
Mine is small, but yours is big.
Your snake is longer than mine!
Your cupcake is pink, and mine is blue.
Taking Turns
Turn-taking is an important skill for children to develop in order to play cooperatively with siblings or peers. By ages 4-5, we expect children to have a basic understanding of how to share and take turns with others, even if it may not always be easy for them. When playing with your child, you can create opportunities to take turns that feel fun and natural, and still allow your child to take the lead.
Hide and Seek: Cover a small object or toy with play dough. Ask your child if they can find what you hid. When they remove the play dough covering the object, practice describing its color, size, and texture. Next, it’s your child’s turn to hide an object of their choosing. Take turns hiding and uncovering.
Play Dough Roads: Try making a road or path for your child’s vehicle of choice. Take turns adding to the road with play dough, like you may build with a train track. Talk about how your additions to the road look and feel. Are they straight or curved? Bumpy or smooth? Is the vehicle going to get stuck?
Play Dough Restaurant: Take turns being a chef and customer. Ask your child what they would like you to make with your play dough (cake, pizza cookie, sandwich, etc). Get specific about their order- What toppings would they like? What shape? What size? When your food is done, ask them for a review. Then switch roles, and guide your child through preparing your order with their play dough.
