Fine motor skills as used in writing as well as vocabulary skills can be improved with play dough. Special educators and occupational therapists love play dough.
Here are my articles on how to use play dough with your nonverbal child.
Encouraging Nonverbal Kids to Talk Using Playdoh
Building Handwriting Muscles Using Playdoh
Do you need a great recipe to make it at home?
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups of flour
- 1 ¾ cup water
- ½ cup salt
- 3 tablespoons vegetable or other cooking oil
- 1 tablespoons alum
Directions
Put all the ingredients in a suacepan. Cook over medium-low heat until the dough is smooth. You will need to stir it as it cooks. Add optional ingredients below for variety!
Optional Things to Add
- Food coloring
- Unsweetened Koolaid
- Cinnamon (Great for apple-picking time!)
- Allspice (Try at Thanksgiving!)
- Nutmeg
- Peppermint flavoring (Great for Christmas!)
- Vanilla
- Orange or lemon flavoring
- Butter flavoring
Note: Not every idea is appropriate for every child. Activities represented here are ideas. Parents (not the author) are responsible for choosing an appropriate activity for a particular child and for the consequences of that activity.
