The way we play with playdough

Kah Yen has a simple playdough set as a gift from a friend. It comes with plastic pizza and bread molds, plates, forks and spoons. Hence naturally, we have been using it to make pizza and bread all the time, then cut them into shapes and pretend-feed everyone in the house.

I have never played with playdough myself as a kid. So I thought that's the only way we can play with playdough, making things using the molds given. When we grow tired of making pizza and bread, I thought of buying Kah Yen a more complicated set with a big machine that twists and swirls and makes ice cream and cupcakes! I saw it on the toy store and I was very impressed.

Magic Swirl Ice Cream Shoppe (Photo credit: Toys R Us)

The husband, speaks as if he has all the wisdom of the world sometimes, said "What? Why do you need a machine to play with playdough? Playdough is supposed to be played with bare hands!" He simply dismissed my idea with a look, that kind of look.

Oh really? With bare hands? So far Kah Yen and I always use the spoons or knives and plates come with the playdough. We have never dirtied our hands.

So the husband went ahead to show us "the correct way to play with playdough", using his own words. And these are what we have made together:

Animals made using playdough

And we had loads of fun making the shapes and put them all together. Kah Yen helped rolling the crab legs and pasting the ladybug's purple dots. I can't believe we have never thought of making animals using our playdough!

I just couldn't help thinking how toys sometimes limit the way our children can play with their own imagination and creativities.

So we are just going to buy some more colors and hopefully one day we can make things such as these:

Playdough ideas from Google image

And I am very much inspired to DIY make our own homemade playdough soon!