Playdough is a great way to combine a sensory experience with a fine motor activity. Take it one step further with this Alphabet Playdough Activity. This is the perfect activity for young children who are starting a letter of the week curriculum. Combine this simple activity with a phonics program and your kids will have a lot of fun learning their ABC’s through play based learning.
If you want to make your Alphabet themed lessons a breeze, then check out the Alphabet Activity Pack. It’s filled with over 300 pages of ABC activities for preschool and kindergarten literacy centers. It’s the perfect way to start off a morning work session in your classroom. Check it out today.
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More Alphabet Themed Fine Motor Play Ideas
Learning to write requires a lot of hand muscles to be developed. Here are a set of fine motor activities that will also teach preschoolers and kindergarteners their ABC’s
Materials Needed
- Play dough
- Letters of the alphabet cookie cutters
- Rolling pins
- Word cards (optional)
How to Play with Alphabet Playdough
There are a couple of different ways to play with this low prep alphabet activity. This is one of my favorite amazing playdough recipes. It works beautifully and the play dough stays soft for months if you keep it in an airtight container.
Option 1. Roll out the playdough and press the alphabet cookie cutters into the dough.
Do this without removing any of the dough. Just pushing the cookie cutters into the play dough is great fine motor practice and one of my favorite ways to get young kids doing finger exercises.
Older kids may want to spell words out, such as your child’s name. Others will just have fun getting familiar with the shapes that make up the alphabet. The only drawback to this option is that you’re limited as to what words you can spell. Since most ABC cookie cutter sets only come with a single copy of each letter, you will be unable to spell words that have the same letter in them more than once.
Option 2. Cut the alphabet out and place them aside.
The next level of fine motor skills will be removing the dough from the cookie cutters. This takes a bit more dexterity than just pushing the cookie cutters into the playdough.
Once again this is a great name and letter recognition activity for preschoolers. It also means that you are no longer restricted by what words you can spell, because you can cut out multiple copies of the same letter if you need to.
Print off a list of sight words or CVC words that you’re working on with your class and let them spell it out in playdough.
Option 3. Use the cookie cutters as a guide for letter formation.
Roll the playdough into long snakes, then wind the snakes around until they form the letters. This is a fun activity if you want your students to work on either their uppercase alphabet letters, or their lower case letters. Just pick a cookie cutter at random and see if you can make the letter yourself.
Using playdough for alphabet activities is a wonderful way for young children to learn their ABC’s through hands-on activities instead of worksheets. You can also use this idea to practice alphabet formation variations. If your children still need something to trace, then take a look at these ABC playdough mats. Each mat contains large letters that lets your child practice letter formation, letter identification as well as gives examples of beginning sound words.
If you don’t want to use playdough, you can also use the alphabet playdoh mats with dry erase markers too.
Are you going to try this Alphabet Playdough activity with your kids?
Don’t forget to pin the idea for later.
