We're celebrating Harvest this week with some seasonal sensory play. We've had great fun with this farm play dough, just perfect for sowing & harvesting crops!
This is a great activity if you have a variety of coloured play dough that's become a little mixed! We blended our various play dough together until our colours became a nice muddy brown colour! Of course, you could just use brown play dough.
First, we explored our newly made farm play dough with a tractor, which was a great way to discover the imprints & patterns created by the tyres.
Then using paint/dough rollers from the Early Learning Centre, Minnie rolled patterns into the dough.
We chatted about the tractors & ploughs we had recently seen on nearby fields, & what the fields had looked like after ploughing. Minnie then ploughed her 'field' with a roller & sowed her crops (butter beans & oats).
Later she added oats & wheat to the dough.
I love adding natural objects like this to small world play, they're great to explore & encourage so much imaginative play.
Soon the farmer's field was packed with crops! There was no time to spare though, harvesting time was just around the corner...
This set up has been great for exploring textures, the natural world, seasons, & food, manipulation of small objects, creativity & imaginative play.
Minnie has returned to this several times, & talks about farming & harvest alongside her play. I also used this recently as an activity for our toddler group & it proved to be a big hit there too. The children loved planting & harvesting the wheat & oats with the play dough, & took such great care as they did so.
My little farmer is still ploughing & planting, I wonder what crops she'll be growing next?
