My strong hands

These activities are for children aged 27-36 months and align with stage 5 of the Developmental Journal Babies Visual Impairment (DJVI).

Safety first

What you'll need

• Dough ingredients from your own recipe or you could use playdough. 
• A working station to complete the activity where mess can be easily cleaned. 
  
   

Tips

• Try to encourage your child to take part in making the dough. They could help to measure ingredients, pour using their hands or a stir with a spoon.

• Consider colour contrasts between the dough and the working station as well as the impacts of lighting. For example, a white, easy wipe cloth, red dough and blue cutting or rolling tools. A darker coloured dough may be better suited to your child’s needs than a lighter coloured dough.

Activity

You can guide your child by completing the activity yourself as they place their hands over yours to feel the different actions and movements. 

• Spaghetti: take a large amount of playdough and ask your child to pull it apart using two hands to create long, stringy pieces like spaghetti shapes.
• Meatball: ask your child to roll the playdough to make meatballs. Repeat using the opposite hand. Place the spaghetti and meatballs on a plate.
• Sausages: make sausages encouraging your child to either use one or two hands to roll playdough into a sausage shape.
• Pancakes: roll a piece of playdough into a ball and ask your child to use the palm of their hand to flatten the balls into pancakes.
• Doughnuts: make a ball and then flatten it. Encourage your child to use a gentle touch and with pincer grip take a small amount of playdough from the middle creating a doughnut.