Silkysteps early years forum - planning ideas for play

This pine cone outline sheet helps to encourage children's fine motor skills as they pick off small sections of dough, roll them between thumb and forefinger or in the palm of their hands before squashing them into each of the scale placemarkers drawn on the playdough mat. Use brown dough for the cone scales and green dough, rolled into thin ropes for the needle sprigs.

Wherever possible include the real thing so that children can see, smell and handle the items as they'd find them in the natural world and encourage personalised work, where own designs are used to formulate, build and develop unique doughy structures.

This activity sheet compliments the ideas on this silkysteps' playdough page