Invitation to Create New Colours with Playdough as a Medium

We’re back from our holidays!

A couple of days ago, I was unpacking our suitcase filled with things we had bought as well as been gifted by family and friends on our recent holiday to Singapore when my toddler spotted a set of playdough tubs from Miniso and asked to open it.

Now I’ve never bought playdough in my life, not even once, as I’ve been making my own for years. This was gifted by my cousin and when I saw how bright and vibrant they are (the ones I make myself are never as vibrant because food colouring is expensive for a family on one income and I use it sparingly for playdough since there are so many other activities I use the colouring for), I had in mind a colour exploration activity I wanted to try with my toddler that was inspired by @lnnally on Instagram.

Invitation to Create New Colours with Playdough

Using playdough primary colours, I invited the toddler to create as many new colours as she could. Initially I pinched 2 small pieces of different primary coloured playdough and showed her how I could roll and squish them together between my hands to make new colours. When she had a go, she chose to combine all 3 colours together as seen in the photo, that little multi-coloured piece at the end.

She’s still developing the fine motor skills needed to roll and squish the different playdough together such that the colours meld together uniformly but I love how the learning potential here is so visual and kinesthetic, so open-ended, and not to mention all the hard work involved in working those finger and wrist muscles through all the rolling and kneading is just wonderful.

For older kids, this activity can be extended by getting them to experiment with combining different ratios of two different colours to explore the concept of gradients and hues. You can also ask them to give their new colours a unique or interesting name of what the colour reminds them of (e.g. eggplant purple, traffic light green, mandarin orange or mud brown). This is great for language development. To extend on the learning one step further, get the children to document their findings through a different art medium – using watercolours perhaps 🙂