What are the best play dough/ modelling resources for young children?

One of our favourite ways to practise fine motor skills is by squishing, squeezing and shaping. But with so many types of play dough and similar resources available it can be tricky to know which ones to choose. We’ve been on the hunt to find the best ones!

Here’s our favourite, tried and tested, modelling resources

• Play Doh– How could we not include Play Doh?! A brilliant resource for modelling, shaping and squishing. If you’re overwhelmed with the vast number of different Play Doh sets to choose from, we’d recommend the Rainbow Super Value Pack. As the name suggests, there’s lots of colours to choose from and it’s great value for money.

• Pluffle– If you’ve not come across Pluffle yet you’re really missing out! It’s a sensory dream! Like a mix between play dough, cotton wool and snow…it’s very fun to play with and mesmerising to watch.

• Kinetic Sand– Love, love, LOVE kinetic sand. It’s brilliant! Read our full review of it here. We love it so much we even featured it last year in our Top Sensory Resources for Kids here. Again, like Play Doh, there’s a lot of choice of Kinetic Sand sets- we’d recommend the sand castle sets (pictured below) as you get a few accessories and a great tray for the kids to put it in to help stop it going everywhere!

• Play Foam– This is another great option for modelling. It’s made of lots of tiny balls that stick together. Read our full review here. We’d recommend this play foam set as it comes with a container to put the individual coloured playfoam into.

• Flubbadoh– We’ve only recently discovered this and absolutely adore it. It’s just wonderful to play with. You can roll it, squash it, cut it and even stretch it and has such a lovely texture to it. Incredibly therapeutic. Would highly recommend.

• Home Made Playdough! If your budget is tight then making your own playdough can be a great option. Here’s our easy, non bake recipe for making playdough with kids.

So what now? You’ve chosen your modelling resource but are there any ways you can enhance play?

Here are some modelling accessories/extras that we love.

• Learn the Alphabet Dough Mat– Fab resource for encouraging children to form the letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case) using dough.

• Play-Doh Starter Set– Comes with scissors, cutters and even a ‘pizza cutter like’ implement.

• Play- Doh Buzz ‘n Cut Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop Toy– If you’re looking for something a bit different and fun, this Play-Doh set is really great. Kids can giggle away pushing the Play-Doh through and pretending to be a barber cutting it.

*Please note we were sent some samples to try. All opinions and words are our own. This post contains some amazon affiliate links, more information is in our About Me section.