The weather outside is frightful, so it seemed like a good day to play inside with playdough! Since we can see the snow outside, we made snowballs and snowmen and all sorts of cold things from inside our cozy house. We have been experimenting with all kinds of playdough recipes, but this is the one that seems to work best for us: http://www.playdoughrecipe.com/
We used the playdough mats and cards from my Interactive Play Dough Mats: Snowballs!
We had a ton of fun picking a mat from the pile and making a “snake” to put on the numeral. After the playdough traced the numeral, we used our fingers to trace the numeral. It is great for little learners to actually feel the shape of the numeral. Then, we made a matching number of snowballs.
Squished snowballs are better than no snowballs at all!
One thing that makes these mats interactive is adding the cards. Students will choose a card from the pile (you choose the skill that you want them to work on) and build the appropriate number of snowballs, snowforts, or snowmen. Here she is drawing from the numeral cards.
There are also ten frame cards. Students can practice with the ten frame cards to help them build automatic recognition of the ten frames.
The fun begins with addition. If you are feeling adventurous, you can add two colors of playdough in your center. Then, students can represent the two numbers with two different colors.
You can also use snowball manipulatives with the mats. Students can draw the cards and represent the numeral, ten frame, or addition sentence with the snowball manipulatives.
When I am working with young students or students with fine motor difficulties, I always hot glue foam to the back of my manipulatives. This allows students to have more success in grasping and manipulating them.
Addition with manipulatives.
The best of both worlds! Play dough and manipulatives.
After playdough, we used the cards to have a “snowball fight”. This partner game is “war”, but sounds more fun when you call it a “snowball fight”. We changed it up, by giving one player numerals and one player ten frames.
You can also have a “snowball fight” with addition sentences.
I love all the games that you can play with a few types of cards. We played memory with numerals and ten frames, but you could also use addition sentences and ten frames, addition sentences with matching sums. The list is endless!
There are tons of printables to go along with the playdough mats, so you can keep extending the learning!
Next Monday, I am going to be holding my first Collaborative Giveaway. It is going to be AWESOME!
There are so many wonderful teacher authors and artists that donated to this giveaway. I want to try and highlight each one of their stores before the giveaway is over.
I’m going to start with one of my favorite clip artists. You may recognize her work from the games above. Sarah from Educlips is AMAZING! If you haven’t seen her work, then you absolutely need to check it out. She makes everything that she draws irresistible! For this giveaway, Sarah has donated:
While we are talking about clip art, we can’t forget Glitter Meets Glue Designs! This clip art is original and unforgettable. If you love glitter (I definitely do!), then this is the clip art for you! Here is the awesome art donation:
