As teachers we all know the value for the children of playing with dough.  Research show that using your fingers and hands actually stimulates your brain and increases the number of neural connects it makes.  The children engage in increasingly complex sensory-motor skills and movement patterns and learn to use different tools.

The majority of Pre School use Play Dough to achieve these aims.  However a Pre School in New Zealand (Lucknow Kindergraten – Havelock – North New Zealand) make this experience ‘authentic’ for the children by using real dough – for a real purpose – every day .  I thought that this was a great idea and easy to implement at Manangatang as we have a small group.  So now every Wednesday we are going to have a real dough experience – for a real purpose.  I have used Pintrest to gather lots of ideas in the holidays.

This week our experience with dough was to make scones.

Keep following to see how we strive to make the ‘dough experience’ come to life each week.

Thank you to my colleague Louise (Ouyen Kinder) for sharing her New Zealand experiences with me.  I love new ideas.