Play-doh or play dough is heavily used by young children in their art and craft projects both at home and in school. The compound is composed of flour, mineral oil, boric acid, water, and salt.
Benefits of play-doh to a kid
According to child development experts, there are plenty of benefits that come with your children playing with the dough.
It has also been shown to encourage prewriting and other fine skills like holding a pencil, cutting with scissors, and using tweezers.
Promotes creativity and imagination: There are loads of things that your child can do with play-doh. The child can make a car, alien, cupcake, home, and practically anything he can consider. This ability promotes creativity and imagination.
The practice is calming and therapeutic: As the pressure ball, the play-doh is stress relieving. The squashing and rolling of the dough aids in easing tension, improving focus and releasing additional energy.
Promotes independence: According to child experts, it’s important that children start believing in themselves from a young age. Since the kids play with the dough alone and produce the designs independently, they’ve heightened self-esteem and have a tendency to think in themselves.
Improve social skills: It is advised that you place the children in classes so that they can play collaboratively. This plays a very important role in helping the kids to come up with great social skills which are important in all areas of life.
How To Introduce Your Children To Play-Doh
For your child to enjoy the benefits that have play-doh you need to introduce him to it. One of the things which you should do is to poke the dough. You should demonstrate it to him and he will probably copy you. Another thing that you ought to do is to pinch the dough. Most babies develop the pincer grasp by the time they’re 9-10 months; thus, they will easily learn this skill.
The final thing that you ought to do is to conceal the dough. You can hide it under or inside containers. You should place the dough inside the egg and then watch your munchkin as he discovers how to squeeze the egg until it pops open. Along with the satisfaction of learning how to do it, the opening of the plastic egg also helps the child to develop fine motor strength, hand-eye coordination, and bilateral abilities.