Play dough mats are all the rage right now! Whoever came up with the idea is a genius! They are a totally inventive way to teach young children all kinds of educational skills without making a huge investment. This set of five gingerbread play dough mats that you can print featured below is perfect for the holiday season. After all, what’s Christmas without a little gingerbread man craft and learning fun?
How to use the Play Dough Mats
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this learning tool, let me briefly explain. Parents and teachers everywhere are creating these mats, which are then simply printed out and slipped into a plastic sleeve.
A cheaper alternative is ordinary plastic wrap. Tear off a piece larger than the mat itself. Use easy-to- remove tape to secure it to the table or work surface. When your child is done playing simply throw the plastic wrap away.
If you don’t want to invest in sleeves or don’t have plastic wrap handy, no worries! Just keep in mind that the play dough mats won’t last as long and will need to be printed out frequently.
Honestly, the instructions for each colourful mat are pretty self-explanatory. It will probably be necessary to help younger kids the first time they play with a new mat. After that, many children can use it successfully on their own!
Learning Activities With Christmas Mats
All sorts of learning activities are possible with the mats. Colours, numbers, shapes, and counting are just a few of them. Depending on the purpose for which the mat was created, it can even be used to teach social skills like sharing and saying please and thank you!
Once you start searching for play dough mats, chances are you’re going to find tons of them your children want to play with. An easy way to keep them all together is to put them in a three-ring binder. Punch each mat with the appropriately-sized hole punch and storing them is easy-peasy!
For more fun Christmas crafts and games ideas, check out the Santa Matching Game with Printable, the 17 Reindeer Crafts For The Family, the DIY Rudolph Tealight Ornament, and the 17 Snowman Crafts for Kids!
Click on the photo below to print each individual mats!
Have fun with your littles ones and Happy Holidays!
These are awesome for children to have fun while learning
These are adorable, kids will love them.
Such great activities to keep kids occupied
Cute, these have so many cool designs with numbers.
What an awesome set! Making gingerbread themed-anything is a must for the holiday and this is a pretty neat activity to do.
I love these … so festive … and the plastic wrap DIY idea.
The grandkids will love theses, love the learing aspect.
i actually have never heard of play dough mats but they sound like a great idea. Very creative and great for the kiddos.