Pretend Play : Play Dough Pizza Bites

After sharing 34 ways to create, pretend and learn with Play Dough last week, I stumbled upon Play-Doh's website and came across Play-Doh Playdates!

A bunch of pizza ideas! I loved the Pizza Play Dough idea that I shared from The Imagination Tree, so I thought Henry would love to make his own and have a Pizza Night!

Henry's been begging me to play with play dough the last couple of days and when I asked him if he'd like to make pizza, he was one happy boy!

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Tractor & PlayDoh Birthday Party Fun!

Henry turned 3 last Friday
and he had his birthday party on Saturday.
It was a lot of fun!

All Henry wanted for his birthday was a Tractor Cake.

Instead of carving a cake into the shape of a tractor,

I decided to go the route of giving him a new tractor on his cake.

Henry couldn't wait to cut the cake to take the tractor out,

and pulled the stuck tractor out of the frosting right away.

[Maybe with a little coaxing from his Uncle.]

For some fun at the party, 

my Mom and I made PlayDoh for the kids to play with.

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Homemade Play Doh : It's [much] Softer!

As I've mentioned a few times already,
Henry is on a huge PlayDoh kick lately.

One day last week, Henry and I were with his Grandma.
He wanted to play with PlayDoh.
Grandma's PlayDoh had gotten kind of hard and crumbly.

So we set off to make our own.
I've seen many of you guys doing this.
I, honestly, thought it would be way too much work and didn't want to bother with it.
[I've made PlayDoh before, but I was a child...]

We dug out an old recipe out of an old church cookbook.
My mom submitted the recipe long ago.
[The recipe we used is at the end of this post.]

It took only a few minutes to make.

With the exception of Alum,
everything is something I would have on hand.
[Luckily, my mom did, probably leftover from long ago when we last made PlayDoh]

Granted, Henry didn't get in on making the PlayDoh.
But he did enjoy the outcome.
This Homemade PlayDoh is so soft and pliable,
Henry was able to do so much more with it compared to the store bought stuff.

Take a look at these tracks!

Let's see what else that made some neat impressions:

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Food Tracks & Layered Playdough

Making tracks with trucks and tractors in Play Doh is nothing new in this house.

Instead of vehicles, today we tried food!

[play food]

Craters made from grapes!

Corn on the Cob made nice rows.

And a fork?

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Just Playing with Play-Doh and Forts

Henry has been having a lot of fun just playing.

I think doing all these activities and crafts with him lately has increased his independence.

We pulled out the Play-Doh tub again and he's starting to explore a little more with it. 

He still made his usual - cookies. They were M&M this time. I tried making it a little educational and had him count his M&Ms as he put them on the cookies. 


I made number sheets with cookies with the corresponding M&Ms on it - and I printed out the numbers 3 and 4 (I thought it might be better to only do a couple at a time instead of overwhelming him with all 1-9.


He just wanted to make his own cookies - instead he wanted me to put the right number of M&Ms on the cookie print outs.

Henry wanted a snake - So I made him a nice long snake (sometimes it was a worm). He rolled it up in a spiral and said he was 'sleeping'. Then he stretched it out and decorated it (made it 'pretty').

He also wanted to make balls (like Grandma does) - and he played catch with Blue Dog (he's right next to him in all of these pictures, but I didn't get him in any of the pictures). Over and over he rolled the ball back and forth between him and Blue Dog.

I cannot wait until he's able to make these more by himself. That's how all the activities and crafts are that we do - a lot of me doing it, and Henry assisting. It will make my day when he does the majority of it, and me doing the assisting.

Henry's also been really into forts (again, built by me or Dad). He tries building his own, but can never get the cushions to stay in the right place. Right now, the only place he tries to build a fort is on the couch. Almost every day, the cushions come off - he gathers all the blankets he can find and asks me to build his fort. It becomes his house - he has a basement, attic and a roof. Sometimes he has more specific rooms. Most of the time he likes to be completely shut up with his flashlight, a pillow or two, and Blue Dog.

What activities do your kids like to do over and over?

Busy Busy Busy

These activities sure keep us busy! The hardest for me is to prepare the night before and decide what activity to do and 1) make sure I have everything needed and 2) get out everything needed! I don't know how many times I said, "Henry, let's do _____ today" and he got so excited only to find out I didn't have everything to do it... bummer.

Here's what we've been doing! (I know, some of these seem pretty minor, but just setting a time aside to do it seems to be the trick)

1) Indoor Sandbox! -- beware: this WILL be messy. 

Henry spent hours playing with this and asked to get it out the next day again. However, I'm trying to keep it as a "special" toy. I used rice for the 'sand' - you could use just about anything... I'm not sure why I didn't just use sand.... I was thinking this would be less messy, but I'm not sure it was.

 2) Green Rice Crispy Treats - Xmas Cutouts

We made Rice Crispy Treats and dyed them green for Xmas and the plan was to cut them out with Xmas Cookie Cutters (we have an abundance of them at the bakery...) - however, the cutters never found their way to the house. I did have a star cutter here so as Henry ate them, they got cut (and I got the scraps.... hehe)

 3) Pasta/Cereal Necklace

I thought this one would be a big hit and would entertain him for hours. But on this morning, Henry refused to have breakfast, so instead of threading any cereal, it just went in his mouth. This activity was a dud for us. :(

 4) Play Doh!! 

Obvious, huh? Its never been a hit before, but this time... WOW, Henry spent 2 hours making 'food' for me to eat, and he only quit then because it was suppertime. 

 Here is a picture of his specialty menu item - "Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream"! (He came up with the name on his own...)

 

We went to see Santa on Saturday and did a little craft afterwards. Henry enjoyed himself!

 

And I'll leave you with a picture of Henry on Santa's lap (I was actually surprised he didn't figure out it was our neighbor, Jerry). He did good - he told him what he wanted to Christmas - "blue tractor and green semi!" (by the way... anyone know where to find a green semi?!?"