I believe I have mentioned before that one of my daughter’s favorite books is Who Pooped in the Sonoran Desert? The book explores identifying animals in the Sonoran Desert based on their tracks and scat. The author has a whole series based on different National Parks around the country. We picked the book up during our trip to Arizona. Using the book as a leaping off point, S and I started by making snow playdough to explore animal tracks
To make the snow playdough we used our standard no-cook recipe and added white and black glitter to the dough.
Base Recipe
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup of boiling water
optional: glitter
Mix flour, salt, and cream of tartar together. Add oil and water and mix until combined. Roll out onto a lightly floured surface and knead. If the playdough is sticky knead in additional flour. *Test the temperature of the playdough before allowing children to knead.
Playtime
Once the dough was cool we pulled out a bunch of animals to make tracks in the snow. Many of the animals we used were ones from our playmobil sets.
Those animals explored all over the snow covered ground. We observed the different tracks that were left by the different animals. What was great about the playdough is when it has too many tracks on it we just rolled the dough back into a ball and then flattened it back out. It was like a snow storm hit and left fresh snow.
We talked about where the different animals live and built dens or caves for them. Others hung out amongst the trees. S even fed the animals different foods.
What a great way to teach kids how to identify the different animal tracks. I need to do this myself. 🙂 You always come up with the best teaching games.
Thank you so much Alli!
This is SUCH a cute idea, Paris! You’re always so creative. 🙂 My husband is really good about identifying animals by their tracks, but they all look the same to me. Looks like I need to pick up a copy of Who Pooped in the Sonoran Desert? for me!
It’s seriously a fun book! Thank you Natalie!
You had me at the title! What a fun and creative activity to make together and then use later! I just pinned this to try with my girls!
Thank you Sarah! I hope you girls have fun with the activity!
I love this idea Paris. You always make play time fun, yet educational.
Thank you Louida! You’re so sweet
This is really a cute idea. Definitely gives the kids an idea on how animal prints look like would be fun to look for tracks outside.
Yes, we hike a trail that we always are search for animals prints and then try to figure out what left the track (usually a deer)
what a great idea! i love that you made your own playdough, that’s amazing. and even better with glitter mixed in 😉 educational and fun… i can’t wait to do this with my little one.
Thank you Jennifer! I hope you have fun with your little one!
This is such a fun creative idea. My son has a ton of dinosaurs and I think he would love checking out their footprints!
Great idea Sarah! My daughter loves dinosaurs too – see what to bring all the animals onto the snow! 🙂
Great idea, looks like your daughter had fun making and playing with it 🙂
Thanks for sharing at Creative Mondays
Thank you Claire! She did have lots of fun!
Such a fun way!
Thanks Ellen!