Footprints

This was my son’s idea for an activity. After we had finished with the Lion Inside Activity my toddler took the animals over the playdough and started pressing their feet into it to see what would happen. Such a simple and great idea from my son that I decided there and then to make up a small world activity which incorporated making footprints. It was a lovely activity to talk about the different animals, colours, smells that we were experiencing as well as developing my 2 year old’s imagination and thinking skills.

Set Up

For this activity I made my own playdough using this recipe. I decided to make my own playdough because I wanted to put different smells into the playdough to make it a multi sensory experience. I put lavender extract into the green playdough, cocoa powder into the brown playdough and chamomile extract into the yellow playdough. I also added some gold glitter into the yellow sand to make it glisten. The african animals are from our toy bag. These animals are fantastic because the footprints are really defined.

My 2 year old immediately started pressing each animal into the playdough and carefully lifting them up. It was a great activity for us to talk about whose footprints were those, the different sizes and shapes of the footprints. My son really loved the smell of the brown playdough (unsurprisingly as it was made with cocoa powder) and each animal had a chance to stamp in the mud. My toddler also unprompted experimented to see what imprint the fish in the river made in the playdough.

This was a successful toddler small world activity as my 2 year old spent a long time playing with the animals and revisited it throughout the afternoon. When we had finished playing, I put the playdough in the fridge and we recreated the activity the next day.