Throughout our month of farming, we read many great books. In these books, we learned about farm animals, tractors, and barns. In our second week of farm activities, we read a book called the Little Red Hen. To help us understand the main character, we used brown clay to create our own hens!

Using play dough as a medium, feathers, and plastic eyes, we created our own version of our favorite chicken! By manipulating play dough and other mediums, children practice using certain physical skills with the hands as the squish the dough with their fingers.

Children can also practice skills such as pinching, squeezing or poking while they play with the dough. Lastly, using play dough helps a child practice using imagination and other cognitive abilities such imitation, symbolism and problem solving. This helps your little ones learn more about their environment as they make and mimic everyday objects with the play dough.