Create Your Own Playdough Maths Activities At Home

Upgrade your drawings to 3D with a playdough by numbers activity! This is a great way to introduce your under fives to maths and logic using play.

Take your painting by numbers to the next level by using play dough to make your drawings literally jump off the page! Not only is this a unique and fun way to get creative that kids will love, it's also a great activity to help young children improve their fine motor skills through counting and colour-matching. Follow the steps below to create your own playdough masterpiece and put the kids' number skills to the test!

1. Choose a design, for example your children's favourite animal, and draw out a basic outline dividing sections up like the head and limbs. This will be your play dough mat, but if you don't want to make your own there are plenty of free printable playdough mats online that you can choose from!

2. Decide what colours you'd like to use for your playdough design and create a key matching these with the numbers 1-5 (depending on how many colours you will be using), for example brown equals the number 2. Mark the different sections of your playdough mat picture by each number, starting with 1 and counting up.  

3. Start building your playdough onto this number mat using the colours as a guide. You can either flatten it out as you go or have your playdough coming out of the page in 3D!

4. When you're done carefully remove the design from the sheet, if it's one you'd like to keep, and you can reuse these playdough number mats over and over making a different key each time to try out a variety of colours!

Colouring by numbers is a wonderful way to disguise counting as play and support the early years development of your pre-school children, whilst older kids will love getting more adventurous with their play dough designs as they challenge their number skills. Download your own instructions to get creating and share them with other parents looking for the best playdough maths activities for their kids!

Through #kidadldaily we'll be sharing one fun-packed idea a day to keep you inspired during lockdown, using only household basics or just your fine selves. Got some old cardboard boxes lying around? Why not make your own robot costume or pirate ship! Follow the #kidadldaily hashtag on social media so you don’t miss our daily dose of inspiration, and tag us in your pictures and videos so we can share them across our platforms! We can’t wait to see what you create.