Toddler Art Class: Playdough & Pinecones

Making impressions in dough with nature and a few other things.

Art Project: Playdough & Pinecones
Supplies:
playdough (we used this recipe because it was no-cook and okay if kids ate it)
objects to poke the dough with (pinecones, plastic bugs, wooden sticks....)
rollers (I have some very sturdy cardboard tubes that I found somewhere that worked well.  Sets of wooden blocks often have a cylindrical piece that might work well. A length of PVC pipe cut into shorter lengths would be cheaper than a class set of rolling pins...)

Book:  
Penguin and Pinecone : a friendship story / Yoon, Salina
(although an odd choice for a program in June, this one fit this project really nicely!  white dough = snow, pinecone is there and the heart he makes out of little stones was reminiscent of the "stone arranging" class a few weeks ago.)

 What Kids Do:  make little lines with wooden sticks

 make impressions of the plastic bugs

 make impressions of pinecones

 use the wooden stick to "dig scoops" out of the dough

create still-life sculpture

 roll the dough flat.

 verrrrrry flat

 smash it between your hands to make it flat!

 wrap your rolling pin in a "sweater"

 Make the sweater fancy

 stuff the dough inside the rolling pin

 Stuff the pinecone inside the dough

 make a rolling pin nose

 

collect pinecones in a bucket.  Because, of course!

Hindsight Tip:  since the ingredients for this dough are flour, sugar and oil, I was pretty surprised that we didn't have more kids just shoving it into their mouths, but it didn't seem to be an issue for this class.  Kids DID do some great outside-the-box thinking for this activity, though!
Just a reminder: I've done this class indoors before and playdough is always messier than you'd think it would be...  Outside worked fairly well.

 Variations to try: 

--You could try colored dough
--Try a different theme of objects to press into the dough (could be "round things" or "[plastic] zoo animals" or anything, really!