Straws and play dough are nothing new but they sure are fun! We tried something different – wrapping several straws together with rubber bands. The activity focuses on fine motor work as well as visual arts. The colorful straws definitely drew the children’s attention!
Straws & Play Dough
The idea came from Mother Goose Time’s May theme, Bugs and Crawly Things. We have been learning about insect homes, including the beehive. The idea was to set up an Investigation Station and try Honeycomb Stamping.
I set out play dough, a photo of honeycomb and different-sized straws that I had already bunched and wrapped together, 5 or six of them with a rubber band.
Some straws are bigger around than the others. I cut them in half and wrapped a rubber band around them like is shown below. Everyone had a set of large straws and a set of small straws.
Easy for little hands to hold!
Flatten a ball of playdough with your palm. If you push the bunch of straws very gently on the play dough, you can make a honeycomb pattern. It looks neat!
Press harder and you may get little circles of cut out play dough. They kind of look like pills!
They are irresistible to squish!
Sometimes the straw doesn’t go all the way through the dough. It just stamps the surface.
If play dough gets up inside the end of the straws, you can squeeze them out or it may stay stuck inside. That’s kind of frustrating.
Another discovery was made – Take the straws out of the rubber band. Stick one straw inside the other to clean it out. If the straw is too short and won’t come through, stick another one in there and push it out. Exciting! I love to see the little minds at work. Of course, I thought they could do that to clean out the straws but I let them discover it. Problem solving and discovery!
Making cuts and prints in the play dough with colorful straws is fun!
So is collecting certain colors, sorting them by size …
…or making birthday cakes and singing Happy Birthday!
Another great Investigation Station from Experience Preschool!