This year we celebrated World Play-Doh day in Sydney at the Lavender Green, end of Luna Park for a fun, free, family outing.

As part of the World Play-Doh Day celebrations, there were face painters and bubble creators (from Pistachio Entertainment) and of course lots of Play-Doh to play with!

There was also an exclusive Play-Doh sculpture by artist and author Megan McKean!

Over 700 people came to explore the joys of Play-Doh in a fun, engaging, social environment and have a go using all the amazing resources. Big Wild Imagination and their team of early childhood professionals will be on hand to guide and enhance the child’s experience.

There was also Occupational Therapists – Elise Easdown (from What’s On 4 Kids) and Cindy from Your Kid’s OT.

There are a huge range of benefits of playing with Play-Doh (from Big Wild Imagination)

Sensory Benefits of Play-Doh

• From birth, children use all five senses to begin building an understanding of the world around them.
• Play-Doh stimulates a range of senses including touch, smell, and sight.
• Sensory play is soothing and calming, helping to relieve tension and stress.
• Play-Doh is a creative outlet that allows a child to express their emotions.
• Proprioceptive sense is the ability to know where your body parts are in relation to each other.
• Pushing, pulling, squeezing and applying pressure to Play-Doh are all skills that work towards building proprioceptive sense.

Cognitive Benefits of Play-Doh

• Play is the natural way children learn and learning by doing is best at this age.
• Play supports cognitive development – your child’s ability to think, understand, communicate, remember, imagine and work out what might happen next.
• Play-Doh provides many opportunities for children to explore concepts that help build cognitive skills.
• With Play-Doh, children can compare lengths, thicknesses, weights, sizes, match, sort, and count – all numeracy foundation skills.
• Pre-reading and pre-writing skills can also be explored with Play-Doh using letter stamps for recognition and practicing letter sounds.
• Alphabet letters can also be formed using Play-Doh to engage in creative thinking and reinforce literacy skills.

Communication Benefits of Play-Doh

• Language supports a child’s ability to communicate their needs, wants, desires and emotions.
• Language is also integral in helping a child develop problem-solving skills and build and maintain relationships.
• The language and vocabulary used around Play-Doh experiences helps to build children’s communication skills.
• Receiving praise and feedback for their work builds a child’s self-esteem, confidence and encourages their independence.
• In a social setting, Play-Doh helps children learn to communicate, cooperate and collaborate. They learn the importance of give and take (sharing), and how to build upon existing ideas and create new ones.
• Using Play-Doh in open-ended play opportunities for both independent play and collaborative play helps a child express themselves, explore life experiences and test the boundaries of group dynamics.

Fine Motor Benefits of Play-Doh

• Fine motor development refers to the development and coordination of the small muscles and tendons that control your hands, wrists, fingers and toes.
• The development of these fine motor skills allows for increasing independence as children learn how to perform more delicate tasks like zipping up their jumpers and using utensils at meal times.
• Manipulating Play-Doh encourages the strengthening of the smaller muscles and tendons. This improves finger dexterity while also encouraging hand-eye coordination.
• While playing with Play-Doh, children should be encouraged to squish, pinch, roll, squeeze, poke, spread, pull, tear, knead, twist, and more.
• Using tools like scissors, cutters and the creative Play-Doh resources adds to these actions and the ability to do smaller, precise tasks.

Creative Benefits of Play-Doh

• Creativity is one of the greatest qualities we possess. Children inherently throw themselves into exploring the properties and possibilities of the world around them.
• Play-Doh allows children to communicate ideas that they might otherwise not be able to express.
• When combined with increasing hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, new doors are opened to exploration, learning, and creative expression
• Play-Doh provides a hands-on platform for children to imagine, role-play and bring their ideas to shape.
• The creative possibility of Play-Doh is endless. It is a wonderful way for children to express themselves and develop their imagination.
• Play-Doh can inspire children to become curious thinkers and confident explorers as they engage in the construction and design of their play.

Did you know you can buy Play-Doh on Amazon? Click here.

Do you have a little Play-Doh creator at home?  Join the Play-Doh Little Creators facebook group and share your Play-Doh creations and reviews in the Facebook Group: Little Creators of Play-Doh for your chance to win the Little Creator of Play-Doh Award 2018, $1,000 and a MEGA Play-Doh Prize Pack.