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Teaching your toddler or preschooler about shapes is already a lot of fun because as little sponges, they just soak it all up.
Before long, they’re pointing out all of the shapes that they can find in their environment and those early geometry skills really start taking shape.
But what if we could make it even more fun for them?
What if we could work with them on more than one skill at once?
Well, we can do just that while adding a fun Spring element at the same time with these shape chick play dough mats!
Spring Shape Play Dough Mats
Building and molding things out of play dough is not only a ton of fun, but it’s also a fantastic way to work on strengthening those small motor muscles!
Those muscles are the ones that will eventually make it possible for your child to properly hold a pencil and write, so having several different types of activities available that work on those fine motor skills is super important!
With these printable play dough mats, in particular, children will work on rolling, stretching, and shaping their play dough in order to make all of the various shaped chicks.
Prepping the Spring Shape Play Dough Mats
Within the download file, you’ll find 14 full-page play dough mats with a different shape on each one.
This gives small hands plenty of space to work as they build each of their shape chicks.
With these mats, they’ll work on building a(n):
- circle
- diamond
- hexagon
- heart
- crescent
- octagon
- oval
- pentagon
- rectangle
- rhombus
- square
- star
- trapezoid
- triangle
To prep them for your own home or classroom, you’ll simply need to print them off and run them through your laminator.
If you’re working with young toddlers, you may want to start off with just a few basic shapes and work your way up to some of the more difficult ones.
Using the Spring Shape Play Dough Mats
Using these play dough mats is even easier than prepping them!
Just set them out along with some play dough and let your littles get to work!
Now, you’ll notice that the name of each shape is printed along the bottom of each mat in a traceable font.
If you’re using these with older children or you’d simply like to introduce your little ones to the concept of letters and the words that are built with them, grab a dry erase marker and give them the opportunity to trace each of the shape names once they’re done building each of their shape chicks.
Between the tracing and the molding, they’ll be getting an excellent fine motor workout while learning shapes and their names at the same time!
Looking for more Spring activity ideas? Here are a few of our favorites!