Play dates with PLAY-DOH

Has this ever happened to you? Your kids have friends over, and they are all playing well, and then suddenly, they are buck-wild? They need something to do, besides destroying your house! Well…
PLAY-DOH has a very cool website that I just learned about. You can check it out here. I am always amazed at how many wonderful and informative websites there are out there, to help moms get great ideas. You and your children will enjoy virtually endless hours of imaginative play with fun and engaging PLAY-DOH Play-Date ideas.
At the above website,  you’ll find play-date ideas. Scroll down to the blue section to pick a theme. (This would be great for those of you that home school with themes, or just picking something that goes with your child’s interest.) Each theme includes step-by-step instructions to create PLAY-DOH Fresh Ideas, printable crafts, and healthy snacks to help you host the perfect PLAY-DOH Play-Date!

We chose the Pizza Shop activities to try. Some of the other themes included: Back to School, Beach Party, and Picnic.
I printed off the instructions for making the Pizza Peel, and the Pizza Menu, it is found in the red section under crafts.

These were a great addition to our pretend play. It gave Monkey some ideas of what to make, and the Pizza Peel, made it fun to deliver the pizza. Next time I am going to make the pizza box, because that seems so cool! The craft ideas are so easy, and the site includes the free printables.
Here is Monkey Checking out the menu.

He decided to make the pizza first.

Here he is loading up the pizza dough with sauce.

Here he is cutting up some cheese to go on the top.
The website has step by step directions for making each thing. In the red section, click on fresh ideas, and you can pick which item you would like to make.

Monkey used the directions to figure out how make the olives. He made one super big one.

Here it is already for delivery.

Yummy!

Next he wanted to make the gellato from the menu (he called it yogurt :)

Alligator joined in on the fun to. He made cookies. Chocolate chip, and strawberry chip.
      
 
The website even has snack ideas.

We will definitely be trying that out!
You could easily laminate the menu, and use it over and over. The craft ideas, would be great to put in a theme box, so the kids can play with them any time.

Disclosure: This post is part of a SocialMoms product evaluation, for which I’ve been selected. I’ve been compensated for my time with 8,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points. The opinions expressed in this post are mine and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of SocialMoms or Play-Doh.

Apple Tree Play-Doh mat

I finally got a chance to get pictures of Alligator playing with our Apple Tree Play-Doh mat. You can find my post about the mat here. (You can download the mat for free!)
Alligator really doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, so he really hasn’t played with play-doh much. I guess it is just one of those sensory things, since it doesn’t actually make your hands messy, but it does have a unique texture.
So I sat right next to him and we worked with the play-doh.

I eventually got him to pinch off some play-doh to make apples on our tree.
 
This is a great fine motor/pincher grasp activity!
This post has been shared at Tot School. Come on and check it out!

Apple Play Dough Mat

More printables for my Apple unit.
I really want to get Alligator some exposure to playing with play dough. I think it is great for fine motor skills. So I created a play dough mat.

Here he can make apples and put them on the tree. He can also use the play dough to make an A or a, or to spell the word apple. I am going to put this in a sheep protector, and put it out with red play dough. I think he’ll enjoy it.
Feel free to download it here. Please leave me a message if you use it, I would love to hear about it.
Pictures of him actually playing with it, will come later.