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Playdough Fun with Mandalas, Earth Balls, and Color Mixing

by Jean Van't Hul
August 17, 2016
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Lots of playdough fun for kids, including printing playdough mandalas, making the layers of the Earth with playdough, and color mixing with playdough.

Playdough Fun with Mandalas, Color Mixing, and Earth Balls

I made a new batch of no-cook playdough the other day. Three batches in fact. One red (okay, pink), one blue, and one yellow. And Maia, Daphne, and their friend Emily, descended on the table for an afternoon of playdough fun.

They each explored the dough differently to begin with.

Playdough Fun – Different Ideas for Exploring Playdough

  • Animal modeling
  • Color mixing
  • Earth balls
  • Mandalas
  • Texture prints
  • And more!

Playdough Animals

Daphne poked in toothpicks to make some sort of playdough animal.

Playdough Fun - Color Mixing with Playdough

Color Mixing with Playdough

Maia used the playdough for color mixing, something we’ve done in the past a bit. She worked two primary colors together in her hands to make the secondary colors. And then created a color wheel of sorts on top of a lego base of all things.

Playdough Fun - Making the Layers of the Earth with Playdough

Playdough Earth Balls

And Emily added layers of playdough around an initial ball, creating a sphere of concentric color. She cut it in half to reveal the circle layers (much like the layers of the Earth) of blue, green, pink, and yellow.

The other two were so impressed and inspired that all three started making the multi-colored dough balls. Lots of them.

Playdough Fun - Making the Layers of the Earth with Playdough

They started by shaping a ball of one playdough color. Then they would roll out second, third, and fourth colors with the rolling pin (or smash it flat with a ruler if one of the others had the rolling pin) and wrap these layers around the ball of playdough, one at a time.

Playdough Fun - Concentric Circles of Color

Of course, once the concentric circles of playdough color were created, they had to slice them each in half the reveal the beautiful layers.

Playdough Fun - Rolling Out Concentric Circles of Playdough

Eventually, one of them took a rolling pin to one of the sphere halves and rolled it out to display the concentric circles on a flattened plane.

Which they all thought was cool so they started doing that to more of them.

Playdough Fun for Kids - Making Mandala Designs in Playdough

Texture Prints in Playdough

The playdough table was abandoned when Emily left for the day, but we all returned to it later and started making mandala designs in the flattened playdough disks by poking in the buttons and beads that were on the table as well as printing designs in the playdough with the buttons, toothpicks, a marker cap, and the end of a Fort Magic construction piece.

 

Having fun with playdough printing and mandalas…

A photo posted by Jean Van’t Hul | Artful Parent (@jeanvanthul) on

Playdough Mandalas

Until we had a table-full of colorful playdough mandalas!

Playdough Fun - Playdough Balls and Poke-Ins

The best part is that all that playdough fun was kid-led using my standard playdough setup of a few dough balls and some poke-ins. Which goes to show that you never know where a simple art invitation will end up!

More Playdough Fun for Kids

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Lots of playdough fun for kids, including printing playdough mandalas, making the layers of the Earth with playdough, and color mixing with playdough. #playdough #sensoryactivities #kidsactivities #kidsart #artsandcrafts #mandalas

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