As we come to the end of our A-Z of Sensory Play the letters certainly become harder. However, I had one activity I had been looking forward to exploring with the letter X: X-Ray Playdough.
I used Imagination Tree’s no cook play dough recipe and added black food colouring to the boiling water. After several minutes of kneading, we had wonderful black play dough. I then created a tray of resources for my son to use. I placed small marshmallows in the middle to represent the skull and then cut Q-Tips to different lengths to represent the bones. I also placed a small rolling pin and two gingerbread men shaped cookie cutters
Fortunately, for us my son has no first-hand experience of the hospital or x-rays so we watched a couple of clips on Youtube and looked through some images of X-Rays on my computer. We tried to feel our own bones and discussed what we would be like if we didn’t have any bones.
My son rolled out the black play dough and used the cookie cutter to create the outline of our X-Ray man. Using an image on my computer as a guide, my son placed the Q-Tips on the play dough man to represent the bones. He squashed a marshmallow until it was flat and placed it where the skull would be.
This was a great activity to develop his fine motor skills. He had to work hard to pick up each individual Q-Tip and place it accurately onto the X-Ray. The activity also worked on my sons spacial awareness. He had to choose the correct size Q-Tip in order for it to fit inside the play dough man.
After exploring the two gingerbread men cookie cutters, my son disappeared into our kitchen. He returned with more cutters. He brought back a hand template, a dinosaur and a dog. He then spent the next 30 minutes focused solely on creating X-Rays for each cutter. Google images helped us to locate where the bones would go on the hand, dinosaur and dog.
At the end of the activity, the Q-Tips came away from the black play dough easily. I placed the play dough in an air-tight container along with the Q-Tips so they can be used again at a later date. No doubt my son will be on the look out for more cookie cutters that could be used with our X-Ray Play Dough.
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