Benefits of Play-Doh

Enhances fine motor skill
As a child is playing with play-doh, they are rolling, flattening, squishing, shaping the play-doh, or even cutting it, which allows them to develop & strengthen their hand muscles, which in turn helps to improve fine motor skills of your child.

Improves pre-writing skills
Yes! This is very true! While playing with play-doh, your child’s pincer grip (the action of squeezing the pointer finger and thumb to grasp an object) improves. By improving this, it also works to enhance your child’s pre-writing skills!

Creativity and imagination
There is no denying that play-doh play gives your child unlimited possibilities of molding the dough into whatever they imagine — food, animals, objects, and more! Therefore, it encourages your child to use their imagination and further inspires his or her creativity. By using the different shaping tools, it also further enhances their creative imagination.

Calming effect
Engaging with play-doh is also proved to have “calming effects,” for children. It gives them an avenue to express their emotions or calm themselves down if they are restless. Allow your child to sit in a quiet place, with their play-doh, and you will see the soothing effect on he/she!

Develops hand-eye coordination
By using a variety of shapes and play-doh tools while playing, it will work to improve your child’s hand-eye-coordination!

Social skills
With any activity children engage in, social skills are always at the forefront! While engaging in play-doh play, opportunities to interact, talk, discuss problems and find solutions to creating great works of art and craft with play dough. Thus, playing with play dough will enhance your child’s social skills.

Increases curiosity and knowledge
Curiosity & knowledge go hand-in-hand with anything children do! So, imagine…when they are playing with play-doh and mixing two (2) different colors together, they suddenly see it makes a new color! Or imagine when they mold the dough into different shapes — this strongly encourages their curiosity and will cause your child to ask a variety of questions which would help increase I his/her knowledge.

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Thinking of adding more play-doh items in thee playroom now? Here are some of our favorite items! First, you need a good set of play-doh, and we suggest the, “Play-Doh Modeling Compound 24-Pack Case of Colors.” It’s a good variety of colors, and you can mix colors to make new ones too! And the “Play-doh Fun Tub,” is also a good thing to have — it allows your child to explore different shapes & cut-outs, and also enhances their fine-motor skills. We also suggest a “tool kit,” to use; this also emphasizes the fine-motor aspect of play-doh play, while allowing your child to cut out different patterns, and make different textures with the squeeze tubes!