I love open ended activities that allow kids to explore and use their imaginations. This Nativity Playdough Invitation to Play does just that. It engages not only their senses but also their creativity.
While we have made several Christmas playdough invitations to play in past years such as the Peppermint Christmas Tree Playdough or Scented Gingerbread Playdough Station, this year, I wanted to focus more on the reason for the season even in our sensory play.
With this in mind, our holiday sensory play this season has focused around the nativity with Nativity Slime, a Nativity Sensory Bottle, simple Nativity Sensory Bag, and O Holy Night Sensory Bin. I wanted to share them to show that there are many possibilities to include the story of Jesus’ birth even in sensory play.
These play opportunities create the chance for kids to engage with more than one sense while reenforcing the true meaning of Christmas. 
Nativity Playdough Recipe:
Supplies:
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup salt
- 2 Tbsp. cream of tartar
- 1 Tbsp. oil
- brown food gel to make a light brown colour
- 1 cup water (boiling if making with KitchenAid)
- gold glitter
- optional: a few drops of essential oil in pine, orange, clove, or Frankincense*
*a note about scents: Certain scents are calming while others are alerting. If you intended this activity to be a calming one, be sure to choose a calming scent while if you are wanting to create an activity that keeps kids focused, use a more alerting scent.
Directions if you have a KitchenAid:
- Put dry ingredients in KitchenAid mixer.
- Add oil and the colour and begin mixing with the flat beater.
- As it is mixing on the lowest setting, add the boiling water.
- Add in the gold glitter. If you want to scent the playdough, add a few drops of essential oils. Mix until the playdough texture you want is achieved.
- Store in an airtight container or resealable bag when not in use.
Directions if you don’t have a Kitchenaid:
- Mix the dry ingredients together in a pot and stir in the oil, water and food colouring.
- Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, being sure to scrape the sides and bottom.
- Cook until dough forms a ball. Remove from heat.
- Place it on a piece of wax paper. Knead. Add glitter in at this point and if desired, drops of essential oils for scent.
- Let cool. Store in an airtight container or in a resealable bag.
Nativity Playdough Invitation to Play:
Supplies:
- tray with separated compartments
- playdough (recipe above)
- Playmobil nativity set (or other children’s nativity set)
- rocks
- small wooden blocks
- raffia
- natural wood slices
- stars
- plastic animals
Directions:
- Set the playdough in the center of the tray.
- Place the other items in the compartments around it.
- Invite your child to explore and play.
Sensory and Learning Opportunities:
Stretching, pulling, pressing, kneading, and pushing the playdough engages the proprioceptive sensory system.
Creating the scenes uses the tactile and visual sensory systems. If the playdough is scented, then the olfactory (smell) sensory system is also being used.
This Nativity Playdough pairs well with the Christmas story at home or in a Sunday School class. Students can listen to the story or read it themselves and then create their own manger scenes. 
Playing with playdough also lays foundation for concepts of engineering by allowing children to build and design something that solves a problem. In this case, the problem is how to create a manger scene or tell a story using the materials in front of them.
Set up a nativity learning center in your home, preschool, school, or Sunday school classroom. Include things such as:
- children’s nativity set
- crayons or markers and nativity colouring pages
- Nativity Slime
- Nativity Sensory Bag
- Nativity Sensory Bottle
- O Holy Night Sensory Bin
- costumes for kids to act out the Christmas story
- Christmas story books
- supplies to create Nativity Chalk Silhouettes
You’ll love these other holiday playdough ideas:
You can use the dinosaur action cube indoors or outdoors. Kids of many ages can participate. This is a fun rainy day or snow day activity because it gets the whole body engaged. Kids explore their movements and imaginations as they hatch, tromp, charge, fly, and munch like the dinosaurs of the past.
You can also take the activity one step further by having them read about each of the dinosaur types on the cube or having them draw that species. There are so many possibilities.
I enjoyed seeing my kids’ interpretations of the dinosaurs. Some kids also like to add their own sound effects. We may not know exactly what dinosaurs sounded like, but my kids did some pretty convincing impressions!
Practising gratitude sets the stage for a happier life. 
This game can be played with 2-4 players at a time.
Assembly instructions:
Game Directions:
It may be hard for some children (depending on their age and developmental abilities) to think of things in each category to be grateful for. You can help by proving prompts or examples of your own.
The games can be played a couple of different ways. You can create teams and have a member from each team go head to head against each other or you can play as individuals in a “beat the clock” type of fashion.
The object of this game is to retrieve all the pumpkins out of your pie. To set up, place candy pumpkins on the bottom of each pie plate. Cover with whipping cream. Each player sits with their hands behind their backs and has to find the pumpkins and move them out of the pie using only their mouth.
In this game, players need to attempt to keep their feather in the air for a full minute by blowing it up. It’s harder than it sounds. If a player’s feather touches the ground or a surface, they are out of the game.
To set this game up, pour some pumpkin seeds onto a paper plate for each player. Set that down next to an empty plate. To play, each person puts a straw in their mouth and attempts to transfer all the pumpkin seeds to the empty plate in less than one minute. If you’re playing head to head, then then the person who transfers all of their pumpkin seeds the fastest is the winner.
Place one candy pumpkin (or candy corn) on a spoon. Have players race holding onto their spoon with one hand (you can allow younger kids to use both hands). If their candy drops off, they are eliminated or have to start back at the beginning.
Give each person a turkey baster and balloon. The goal of this Minute to Win It challenge is to get the balloon across the table lengthwise using only the air from the turkey baster. You are not allowed to touch the balloon with the turkey baster. This can be played to beat the one minute timer or played head to head with the winner earning one point for their team.
These copywork pages allow students to explore emotion words and associate the images with the corresponding feeling. This expands their emotional vocabulary.
If these are for a one time use, give the student a pencil, crayons, coloured pencils, or markers and the printed papers.
This is easy to set up, inexpensive, and yet covers several important concepts for preschoolers. It’s fun and engaging, so they don’t even realize that they’re learning as they play. Using some of the same supplies, you can also create the Rainbow Playdough Fine Motor Activity.
