Earth Day Playdough Activity for Preschool: Hands-On Nature Play

With Earth Day around the corner, it’s a great time to engage preschoolers in an Earth day playdough activity that fosters fine motor development while teaching them to care for the environment. And if you’re wondering how to make playdough for this, you’re covered.

This hands-on activity not only supports sensory and fine motor development but also inspires young minds to appreciate and care for the planet. Using materials like blue, green, and white playdough, children can recreate elements of Earth, such as land, water, and sky, while incorporating small toy animals, plastic tree cake toppers, polished rocks, and optional sticks and leaves.

A playdough invitation to play blends sensory play with a focus on nature, making it a perfect way to celebrate the planet. You can easily incorporate nature elements like leaves and flowers while learning how to make playdough that’s eco-friendly, offering a hands-on, meaningful activity for little learners.

This setup encourages open-ended exploration, allowing children to experiment with different textures and shapes, fostering their creativity and inquisitive nature.

By engaging in this playful learning experience, preschoolers not only enhance their motor skills but also embark on a joyful journey toward environmental awareness and stewardship. It’s also what we promote in our Earth Day Activity Pack.

What is a Playdough Invitation to Play for Preschoolers?

Simply stated, an invitation to play is the arrangement of an open-ended playdough activity that “invites” preschoolers to come to the table and explore exterior materials within the playdough activity. These extraneous items might include:

• various craft supplies
• items from nature
• small preschool toys
• other loose parts

A playdough invitation to play allows for preschoolers to explore the use of non-traditional playdough tools within a playdough activity. It fits in well with the Reggio Emilia approach (or Reggio philosophy) to early learning.

Why Set up a Playdough Invitation to Play for Preschoolers?

Because invitations to play for preschoolers are open-ended, their design encourages children to:

• explore
• investigate
• question
• examine participate
• manipulate

A well thought out and designed playdough invitation to play will result in lengthy independent play. The materials should be such that they will capture a child’s curiosity. But an invitation to play is not a teacher-directed learning activity. The teachers serve as a facilitator in learning.

Earth Day Playdough Activity

Setting up an invitation to play is simple, and one of my go-to preschool learning activities. This was such a success, it will forever be in my Earth Day activities for preschool.

Materials

• playdough in blue, green, and white
• small toy animals
• plastic tree cake toppers 
• polished rocks of various sizes and colors
• sticks and leaves (optional)

The Set Up

I used a vegetable dip tray to arrange all the playdough and accessories. They are such an inviting way to offer a set of loose materials, and that’s rule number one in creating a playdough invitation to play with preschoolers — make it inviting!

Having the materials organized also allows preschoolers to immediately imagine how they could use the materials, too.Organization allows them to be more creative.

I offered three colors of playdough — green for land, blue for water, and white for the sky.

And since it lasts so long, I made it several days before the birthday party, too.

Since I had a bunch of plastic trees in our sensory supplies from our dinosaur small world, I added those to the tray as well. They are actually cake toppers, but they work perfectly in playdough as well.  I included come polished rocks and some small toy animals,  too.

Earth Day Playdough Invitation for Preschool

When I offer an invitation to play, there is only one rule:

• Use the materials respectfully (no throwing, breaking, ruining, etc)

So, as with all invitations to play that I offer, I sat back and watched my son and his friends to play with the materials as they pleased.

A good playdough invitation to play is only limited by the materials offered, and preschoolers should be allowed to engage to the full extent which the materials allow — and in their own way.

This is the Earth playdough. I love the Earth!

That’s what my son immediately said as he grabbed a chunk of playdough and started flattening it into a pancake. He used the white playdough to make a sandy beach with palm trees and the green to create a grassy area along the beach, like he had seen in his First Earth Encyclopedia book.

Some of the preschoolers grouped like animals together in what they thought were natural habitats. Others (my older son) created an island where “a zoo of animals were dumped.” The birthday boy was appalled.

That’s not good for the Earth! You have to take care of your animals.

Many of the children created play scenes like in small world play and showed them off to one another. Eventually, all the small worlds became one when all the preschoolers combined their materials.

I loved seeing that collaboration in play. I mean, what more could you ask for? Read all about the benefits of play here.

Not that this is important at a birthday party, but as an early childhood educator, one reason I use so many playdough invitations to play is because they also double as a sensory and fine motor activity.

One of the benefits of playing with playdough and adding different materials to it is that it is a much more fun way to work on that pincer grasp than by pencil work.

Earth Day Printables

Looking for more Earth Day preschool activities to add to your preschool lesson plans? Try these.

Picture Books About Earth Day

I have since added this playdough invitation to play to my Earth Day repertoire. The following are some of the Earth Day books I read my preschoolers in preparation for Earth Day.

Earth Day Activities for Preschoolers

Looking for more Earth Day activities to add to your preschool lesson plans? Try some of these.

• Earth Day Preschool Lesson Plans
• Earth Day Paper Plate Weaving
• Simple Earth Suncatcher
• Earth Day Snack Idea
• Recycling and Sorting Activity
• Recycle Sorting Fine Motor Game
• Earth Day Songs