I must admit I love play dough invitations! When working with play dough, the possibilities for learning are endless! There is just so much incidental learning that is always taking place. What I love most about fall is the beautiful fall colours! I just could not pass up the opportunity to put an invitation together for the girls.

This beautiful fall play dough invitation was so simple and easy to put together with materials I accumulated from my trips to the Dollar Store and some brightly coloured yellow, green and red homemade play-dough.

Below I will share with you how to put this simple invitation together that will keep your littles busy for an extended period of time. I searched my stash and got anything I thought represented fall and threw them in the mix.

Materials You Will need:

• Green, red and yellow Play Dough
• Small plastic pumpkins were purchased at the dollar store.
• Pine cones
• Fake leaves of different sizes, shapes and textures. ( Real leaves will work just as well for this invitation, but the fake leaves will hold up better when being manipulated by your littles.)
• Wooden cubes
• Wooden fall-themed pieces. These small boxes of fall objects are available at the dollar store each year around fall. Each box includeds pinecones, acorns, a variety of leaves, squirrels, hedgehogs and mushrooms.

Here is a list of additional materials that can be added to a fall play dough invitation:

• Fall erasers
• Fall flowers
• black beans, corn and chickpeas
• Fall themed fabrics
• Grass
• straw
• cinnamon sticks
• Woodland animals toys
• Number cards
• Letter cards
• Coloured stones
• beads
• Fall Cookie Cutters

I started setting up this fall playdough invitation by collecting all the colour play dough I intended to use.

I placed them on our table and started rolling. When they were all smooth and flat, I tried my very best to use a small plastic knife to cut around the edges to make them look like fall leaves! 

My girls did not identify them as leaves, but boy, was I proud of them!

I then added all the materials mentioned above. The invitation was so beautiful and inviting. I had to stop myself from adding anything else.

Play dough Invitations are benificial in the following areas:

• Problem Solving
• Hand-eye coordination
• fine Motor skills
• Imaginitive and sensory play
• visual perception
• cognitive development
• Creativity 
• Patterning
• Oral Language and Story Telling
• Reviewing letter sounds
• Counting 
• Learning fall vocabulary
• Colour recognition
• Matching objects that are the same 
• Finding objects that are different 
• Reviewing colours
• Discussing the changes that take place in the fall.
• Overall having an extended period of fun while learning through play.

My girls enjoyed finding the miniature fall objects and using them to create prints in the play dough. one twin collected all the hedgehogs and placed them in the green play dough while she pretended they were meeting g together to eat grass.

In the picture below one twin was collecting all the leaves that were the same and counting them. I encouraged her to tag each leaf as she practised the important math skill of one-to-one correspondence.

As the girls played, they asked me to add some more leaves to the invitation. we observed the leaves and talked about how the leaves change colour in fall.

I think I will be setting up this activity again in the near future because my girls enjoyed it. I think I also enjoyed it just as much as they did.

PS: If you plan to try this activity please stay to watch your little one playing to the end. I stepped away for a few minutes and they started packing up and placing my valuables in the garbage bin. Maybe it is a twin thing.

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Kimberlee and the Learning Step By Step
Team.