Sensory Play Idea: Valentine’s Day Play Dough and Mirrors

Play dough is always a hit with my boys and we love to experiment with new colours and scents. I also like to switch up the type of loose parts I offer them. So with Valentine's Day approaching, I put together this Valentine's themed play dough invitation for them to play with. To make this invitation even more interesting, I included some mirrors for the boys to play on.

What You Need

• scented pink play dough (I always make my own play dough using this no-cook play dough recipe from The Imagination Tree) 
• pink and red buttons
• pink pony beads
• pink straws cut into pieces
• heart-shaped cookie cutters
• plastic hearts
• red heart jewels
• mirrors

We have never tried playing with play dough on a mirror before and as you can see, my two-year old, K, thought it was a fun idea. He was captivated by his reflection in the mirror.

K really enjoyed pressing the different heart shapes and straws into the play dough, which was great fine motor practice for him.

Four-year old J, on the other hand, manipulated the play dough in a variety of ways. First, he added as many straws as he could to make me a birthday cake. Of course, he had to sing "Happy Birthday" as well.

J also tried using the heart cookie cutters, but eventually moved to the pink pony beads.

Then J started to rip pieces of play dough off and press them onto different spots on the mirror, adding different loose parts as he played. Both boys eventually then together to create some play dough art, carefully ripping and squishing the play dough and adding loose parts along the way. 

The boys spent the better part of an hour playing with this Valentine's play dough invitation, leaving this final masterpiece.

Thankfully, both boys were happy to help in the daunting task of removing all the loose parts from the play dough, making clean up a breeze!