Play dough is one of our must-have resources for teaching Chinese and Korean at home! Play dough is easy and inexpensive to make, and there are so many ways to teach Chinese and Korean with play dough.
All about teaching Chinese and Korean with play dough
This post covers:
Benefits of play dough
7 ways to teach Chinese and Korean with play dough
Our favorite play dough tools (including clean up!)
Easy homemade play dough recipes!
It’s been a super busy month where we have hardly been home, which means no time to prep activities.
I’m so thankful for a large batch of homemade play dough in my fridge!
I hope the ideas can be helpful for your family, and I’ve included a video at the end of the post!
Learning to Love Playdough
Honestly, I used to hate play dough and would have my husband take over when my children wanted to play with it. The famous Play Doh brand makes me nauseous!!!
However, homemade play dough has been a game changer. It’s soft and calming.
More importantly, my 5.5-year-old daughter and 2.5-year-old son both love play dough and don’t even realize they are learning while playing!
My children playing with play dough on our dining table
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Play dough: A Fun Way to Encourage the Minority Language at Home
Chinese and Korean are the minority languages for my children, and I’m always looking for activities that pique their interest.
Since I’m learning Chinese with my children, engaging hands-on activities also help me remember new Chinese characters.
However, I can’t speak or read Korean. My children are learning Korean from their nanny, and they rarely use this language when she’s not around.
Therefore, I try to show them that mommy cares about this part of their heritage by preparing simple play-based activities!
花 (Huā / flower) and 草 (cǎo / grass) created with play dough; cutting play dough grass!
(1) Teach Chinese and Korean with Play dough: Benefits for children
In addition to language and literacy, play dough encourages well-rounded and interactive learning.
Fine Motor Skills
Through squishing, pulling, twisting, kneading, rolling, hammering, and cutting, play dough helps young hands develop hand strength, control, and dexterity.
Creativity
Play dough is a versatile material that can be used for structured learning as well as imaginative, child-led play!
The material can be molded into anything you and your child(ren) can dream of!
Science and Math
Creating homemade play dough with children is already the start of a natural science and math lesson.
In the kitchen, you can involve your child with measuring, scooping, pouring, and stirring the ingredients.
During play, trial and error is encouraged by creating shapes, comparing sizes, and using various tools!
Concentration
Since play dough is calming and open-ended, children can often work with it for long-periods of time.
When your child gets uninterrupted time to focus on play dough, this is a natural way to exercise a child’s concentration.
Language and Literacy
The next part of this post will focus on how to use play dough to teach Chinese and Korean!
(2) Seven ways to teach Chinese and Korean with play dough
Here are 7 super easy play dough activities that encourage Chinese and Korean learning at home! My children have enjoyed each of these activities, and I hope yours can, too!
1. Teach Korean and Chinese with Playdough: Letter formation
Parents and older children can create Chinese characters and Korean letters by manipulating play dough!
Letter formation helps children remember individual strokes that make up a character or letter.
Here, my daughter formed the word 花 (Huā / flower) while paying attention to stroke proportion and positioning.
Although we are teaching my son the Korean Hangul alphabet through Montessori colors (red = consonants, blue = vowels), my daughter wanted to set up a rainbow colored activity!
She loves to play teacher and wanted her brother to learn the Korean alphabet through her colorful lesson. However, she couldn’t resist chopping up some of the Hangul letters herself!
Hangul alphabet made from play dough
My son happily joined later and also mashed some with his chubby toddler hands!
2. Teach Korean and Chinese with Playdough: Letter stamping
Forming part of the Chinese character 女 (nǚ / female) with play dough
Stamping Korean words with play dough
We have also had fun stamping our foam magnetic Korean alphabet toys in play dough! You can find similar foam Korean letters here on Amazon.
This activity was inspired by an English alphabet activity from Happy Tot Shelf!
Korean word 하트 (hateu / heart)
If the foam set is sold out, we have also used this plastic Hangul alphabet set, although we no longer use it. This is a popular set that many parents own due to the low cost; however, please note the quality is mediocre and the magnets were falling out of our set.
3. Teach Korean and Chinese with Play Dough: Tracing letters
After stamping Chinese characters and Korean letters in play dough, you can trace words with loose parts! Examples include small rocks, as shown in the image below, or buttons, beans, and beads!
4. Teach Korean and Chinese with Play dough: Letter puzzle
After stamping Korean letters and Chinese characters into play dough, you can also use the indentations as a puzzle!
DIY play dough puzzles can be repeated over and over for reading practice!
Chinese Character play dough puzzle
I used our 磁性拼字拼图 Chinese Characters Magnetic Spelling Puzzle to set up a puzzle matching activity for my 2.5-year-old son! My son had a lot of fun feeling the imprints and fitting the Chinese character pieces to the correct location!
DIY Korean letter puzzle with play dough
Here’s an example of simple Korean words created with Hangul alphabet toys. My daughter read each of these Korean words out loud while stamping and putting the puzzle together!
Another idea is to use this Korean Alphabet Wood Tracing Board to form Hangul letters. When the letters are formed, carefully lift each letter off the wood board.
Then you can invite your child to complete the play dough puzzle! While searching for the missing letters, practice saying the phonetic sound and replace them onto the board!
5. Hide and Find the Missing Letter or Word!
This one is always a favorite for my little guy! When I hide some of the Chinese characters in large balls of play dough, he has a blast discovering what’s inside!
In the photo below, I hid the Chinese word 力 (lì ), which means power, force, and strength.
If you don’t have any of these Chinese or Korean character toys, you can write secret letters or messages inside the play dough!
6. Teach Korean and Chinese with Play dough: Letter carving
After rolling your play dough flat with a rolling pin, take a toothpick and etch the word that you want to teach your child!
In the image below, I wrote 我 (wǒ / me) in Chinese to show my son this character.
Older children who are learning to write can also have fun poking and carving messages in play dough!
Here is my daughter practicing 力 following stroke order.
7. Teaching Korean and Chinese with Playdough: Verbal language
While doing the aforementioned play dough literacy activities or simply engaging in open-ended, creative play, talk about the sensorial experience with your child.
For example, you can narrate the actions they are taking with the play dough.
Alternatively, if they seem very focused in the play dough, find a moment when you have their attention and ask them about their sensory experience.
For clean-up, we love our vacuums! I know a lot of people dread the mess after play dough, but it’s not so bad if the children are playing over a hard surface.
To clean up dried-out play dough crumbs, we use our Swiffer or one of the following vacuums:
A few years ago, my teacher friend had us over and showed me how easy it is to make your own play dough. The texture was so soft, the scent was calming, and our children were so focused on exploring the homemade play dough!
2+ drops food coloring for pastel color; more for darker color
Directions for making play dough
Mix water and food coloring
Mix rest of ingredients in pot
Add colored water to the pot with the other ingredients
Mix thoroughly on low heat until contents solidify; remove from heat
Let cool and knead
Play time! Wash / dry hands before use so that play dough can last longer.
How to store play dough
Store in airtight container in refrigerator (eg, ziplock bags; Tupperware with tight lid +/- saran wrap)
Play dough should last for several weeks to months depending on usage
Jello play dough recipe
For the Korean Hangul activities shown above, we used a Jello Play Dough Recipe as follows:
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup water
1/4 cup salt
2 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
1 package of Jello (sugar-free or regular)
How to make Jello Play dough
Mix all the ingredients together and cook over low on the stove.
Stir frequently to break down clumps
Cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring with a spatula
Once the dough starts to gather together and doesn’t stick to your fingers, remove from stove
Let cool and begin kneading
The colors were vibrant, and my children liked the scent! The only thing I wished I did differently was to half the recipe. Since we made 5 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, and blue), the yield was a very large amount of play dough!
Naturally dyed play dough
While I haven’t had a chance to make naturally dyed play dough yet, I bookmarked these 2 recipes:
Have you tried any of these play dough literacy activities?
If you teach Chinese or Korean to your children with play dough, please let us know! We love seeing how other families have fun learning minority languages at home!
Bookmark our Activities Library to see all learning ideas organized by subject!
Happy learning, friends!
About Betty
I'm a Chinese-American mom who is having fun teaching my children Mandarin Chinese while re-learning the language myself. I love coming up with creative, hands-on, and educational activities, and I hope these ideas help your children have fun learning Chinese!
Great ideas! Thank you. We had used playdoh to form characters with success and this helped build on it since my 5 year old saw the picture of the flower and grass and wanted to copy it :). Convenient since we have worked on spring vocabulary this month. Of course, after making the green and yellow playdoh especially for this, they really wanted to use a cookie cutter to make stars. But that was fine – they made lots of stars, we learned the word for star together, listened to twinkle twinkle little star, and then they counted all the stars at the end and wrote the number. Best of all this kept our Chinese lesson today fun (and child-led) and at the end my preschooler asked about the flower so we’ll do that next time.
Hi Lindsay! Thank you for sharing! It’s so fun to hear about your child’s Chinese learning experience with play dough! Great idea to learn about stars with the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song!
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Lindsay says
Great ideas! Thank you. We had used playdoh to form characters with success and this helped build on it since my 5 year old saw the picture of the flower and grass and wanted to copy it :). Convenient since we have worked on spring vocabulary this month. Of course, after making the green and yellow playdoh especially for this, they really wanted to use a cookie cutter to make stars. But that was fine – they made lots of stars, we learned the word for star together, listened to twinkle twinkle little star, and then they counted all the stars at the end and wrote the number. Best of all this kept our Chinese lesson today fun (and child-led) and at the end my preschooler asked about the flower so we’ll do that next time.
Betty says
Hi Lindsay! Thank you for sharing! It’s so fun to hear about your child’s Chinese learning experience with play dough! Great idea to learn about stars with the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song!