Play Dough Math Activities

If there is one thing we love, it’s play dough.  Another thing we love is creative learning.  Today we’re sharing creative math ideas using our favorite sensory and fine motor medium: Play Dough!  These 9 play dough activities have one thing in common, and that is creative ways to practice math skills and concepts.  Kids will love to practice math with play dough.  Now, which to try first?
Ideas to use play dough in math.   Kids love this creative way to practice math skills and concepts.

Creative Math Ideas Using Play Dough:



Search and count play dough like School Time Snippets.


Count apples with this play dough activity based on the book, Ten Apples Up on Top.


For more counting, print off this apple play dough mat from The Preschool Toolbox.


Teaching kids to count with playdough is fun with this counting activity from The Stay at Home Mom Survival Guide.


You could also use rocks in play dough for counting, adding, and subtracting like we did.


Practice subtraction with a play dough smash activity from Mama.Papa.Bubba.


Or, if addition is what you need to practice, try this adding activity from Simple Fun for Kids.


For basic math skills, explore numbers with play dough like Simple Fun for Kids did and The Farm Girl Initiative did here.


Looking for more ideas?  Try using kinetic sand instead of play dough.  We used our own homemade kinetic sand with dominoes math.


Play Dough can be very inexpensive to make, using ingredients you probably already have.  Some of our favorite homemade play dough recipes would be perfect in these math ideas.  Try these in math for free (or almost free) learning at home:
Orange Zest salt dough recipe
Little Blue and Little Yellow Foaming Dough
 Crayon Play Dough
Glitter Glue Salt Dough Recipe


This post is part of our month-long Learning with Free Materials series where we are sharing learning ideas for homeschoolers and school-extension activities using items that are free or mostly free (i.e. CHEAP or you already have in the home), and is part of the 31 Days of Homeschooling Tips as we blog along with other bloggers with learning at home tips and tools.