Play Dough Factory

Along with all the more common community helpers we’ve been learning about, we also talked about factory workers. This simple Play Dough Factory idea was so fun and effective for learning about factory workers as well as working on fine motor skills, creative impulses and just plain having fun!

Community Helpers Factory Worker

That’s one thing I love about Experience Early Learning preschool curriculum, that it is comprehensive, and includes so many topics we wouldn’t cover if I was planning the lessons on my own. A factory worker is a hard one! It’s not a specific uniform or specific item, it’s more of a process.

I was excited to try the Community Challenge with my group. Usually, the Community Challenges are short activities include everyone in the group and often incorporate songs or rhymes.

Sometimes we do them at circle time, on the floor but this time we moved to a table because factory workers often stand. Then they could see what each other was doing while waiting for their turn.

Play Dough Factory

I pulled together a tray of craft materials or loose parts to use with the play dough. The small cups contain: cut up pieces of pipecleaners, large gems, shells, googly eyes, and beads. You can use whatever materials you like but small items that can be added to the clump of play dough is the idea.

Then we passed around the chunk of play dough and each child added piece part. That was hard to do because everyone wanted to add more than one part!

I explained that factory workers add parts to whatever they are making until it’s complete.

Each person has a job to do and then they pass the item to the next person to do their job.

Singing While We Work

While they worked I led them in singing the Working Side By Side song to the tune of “The Muffin Man.”

We are working side by side,
Side by Side, Side by side.
We are working side by side.
Le’ts make art!

Play Dough Creations with Loose Parts

Here are some of the play dough creations the children made with loose parts in our factory worker play. They loved playing with these materials!

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This play dough creature is especially creative. I was impressed that the 4-year-old used materials to make impressions for the nose and mouth.

Others were full and colorful, more of a collage.

Robot Tinkering

Check out the robot tinkering creative art activity on Keeper of the Memories. My group enjoyed using all the materials and creating their robots but I didn’t get pictures due to a food program representative visit at the time…the day was a bit busy so I didn’t get pictures!

Ladonna at Woolsey Academy also blogged about the Factory Worker activities from Experience Early Learning with lots of great pictures.

Teddy Bear Factory Game

The Teddy Bear Factory Game was included in the Community Helpers Experience Early Learning kit. I didn’t get pictures of us playing the game because you know, when you’re helping 5 preschoolers between the ages of 2-4 play a game, you’re pretty busy! The kids really liked it though.

It’s easy to play the Teddy Bear Factory game too. Roll the cube and move your bear to the closest spot that matches the color. Then you get a teddy bear card of that color. And the game keeps going until someone reaches the end!

This game was great for taking turns, learning the process of game playing and color identification. So fun!

More Community Helpers Activities

• Preschool Dental Health Activities
• Firefighters
• Waiter, Waiter! Preschool Restaurant Dramatic Play
• Preschool Community Helpers Construction Worker