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Mischief Mouse's collection of craft activities for preschool and early years.
Printable resources to help support play - colouring, mark making, labelling, promoting, engaging and extending..
Magical Mammoth's recipes to play with and recipes to eat ..
Stitch Squirrel provides a little tree space for some needle and thread projects  - handmade resources to support learning and development.
Activities for math - Calculator caterpillar's activity ideas to support children's numeracy, reasoning and problem solving play.
Hope Hedgehog invites visitors to take a look through some articles of interest ...
Navigator Narwhal's outdoor - in activity ideas for preschool and early years play.

Magical Mammoth - recipes, edible and to play with ..  
 All new activity ideas for dough are being added to playdough-activities.com
 
  Wrap up warm winter worm!

Have fun with pink playdough, printed tunnels, pretend slime blanket and artificial snow! Explore the life of earthworms as the winter weather starts to freeze the soil. Talk about how worm bodies feel the season's temperature drop and in respnse begin a slow down. Invite role play and dough rolling to create worms that curl up in the picture's tunnel pockets. Discuss how some worms make a slime covering that help to protect them against the icy chill and how earthworms living near the surface hibernate throughout the coldest part of the year.  

A worm playdough activity to explore life and hibernation     written and illustrated by Ruth Grimes ©2015

Activity resources needed


 A quantity of pink playdough - handmade recipe

   Clear PVC cut into small pieces and use as blankets to cover the worms and represent the musus, slime coatings that some worms generate to insulate themselves against the dropping temperature.

Artificial snow and or snow blanket - quilting wad 

Threading

For grey worms use grey chenile stems and transparent pink pony beads - on amazon.co.uk

  For pink worms - craft stems and opaque beads

Background playdough mats

 Single worm hole playdough mat

 3 sized worm holes - playdough atctivity mat

One hole - wrap up warm winter worm playdough activity sheet mat
three worm holes playdough sheet

 
 

 
Play


  Plan ahead for this activity by printing out the prefered tunnel hole backgrounds, trimming where wanted and laminating to guard againt any oil in the dough.  Cut small sections of clear PVC plastic to use as blankets that cover the worms in their holes and artificial snow that can be sprinkled over the top.

   Where wanted expand on the children's interest by adding beads and craft stems that promote threading and share books that sequence the lifecycle of worms.

   Use ruled measures to identify lengths and compare big and small. Order children's dough worms into size and count how many have been made.

    Where wanted add wobbly eyes to bring a caricature element to play - anthropomorphise.



Additional ideas and resources for preschool play

   Do worms have eyes? google search

   How does a worm breathe?

   Will an earthworm live if it is cut?

   What worm grows into two worms when it is cut in half?

   About worms on Buglife.org.uk  

   Earthworm life - children's book on amazon.co.uk  



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