Simple Alphabet Play Dough Activity Tray

Having fun with letters through sensory play!

Fun and simple ways to learn with play dough!

Finding fun, simple and practical ways to play with letters is a must for us. I love including sensory play and fine motor skills into all our activities whether it’s crafts, bins or learning activities like this play dough alphabet tray. Play dough is an awesome tool for all of these! I simply provided different materials for him to explore letters all using play dough as a base.

Simple Alphabet Activity Tray Set up

I love this party serving tray from the party store! Just a few dollars and it has offered a great way to present an activity for us to do. He often gets very excited when he sees the tray because he knows it is usually something for us to work on together. For this activity tray, I dug out letter tiles, beads, cookie cutters, stamps, rolling pins and play dough for him to work on his letters and play with today.

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Activities to Try

Liam has a tough time with open ended play and just picking up something to explore. He often needs a great deal of direction to start something. However, I try to find the right balance between guiding him and stepping back so he can discover ideas on his own. He would prefer an activity that has a distinct start and finish which this did not really have. We did not do as much play with this as I had hoped, but he was willing to try out a few different ways to play with the letters. Since we had all of these materials on hand already and it was so easy to set up, it was worth a try and can always be made up again another day!

Letter Tiles, Stamps, Cookie Cutters, & Beads!

We mostly played together with this one since he isn’t a fan of alphabet activities! He liked hiding the letter beads in the play dough and then pulling them out one at a time. Quick thinking and at least we could talk about the letters as he found them! Sneaky mommy!

Here he used a cookie cutter and color beads to make a few letters! I showed him how he could push the beads in to the shape to trace the letter!

Play dough hide and seek with letter beads. The most fun of all! The best thing to do sometimes is follow his lead and then figure out how to incorporate the learning component into what he is most interested in at that moment. This means mommy has to be flexible and has to go with the flow!