Make a Thunderstorm with Play Dough
My son thought it was so neat when I invited him to make a thunderstorm with play dough. We have been learning about thunderstorms and this was a great way to extend the learning.
The other day I tried to make black play dough for an activity and it ended up gray. It looked like the clouds you see during a thunderstorm. Then it dawned on me. We should use it to make a thunderstorm.
Evan has shown a lot of interest in rain, lightning and thunder. We even checked out a bunch of books at the library about thunderstorms. So I knew this would be the perfect hands-on extension activity for all that he was learning.
Materials Needed:
- Gray play dough (I used about half of a small bottle of black food coloring.)
- Blue and white play dough
- Yellow pipe cleaners
Making a Play Dough Thunderstorm
I laid all of the materials out on a tray and invited Evan to make a thunderstorm. I explained that he could use the pipe cleaners to make lightning, the blue play dough to make rain drops and the white play dough to make hail.
He was very excited by this and got right to work. He was very interested in making lightning bolts with the yellow pipe cleaners. He kept adding them until he ran out and his gray cloud was covered with them. He kept commenting on how many lightning strikes his thunderstorm had.
Eventually, he added the rain drops and the hail. In the end, he had made a pretty awesome play dough thunderstorm!
Here are some related posts I think you will enjoy!