Teach word awareness with these hands-on playdough mats. The concept of a word is a basic phonological awareness skill we need to explicitly teach preschool and kindergarten kids. Using a popular and familiar Nursery Rhyme theme will keep your students engaged while they learn to segment the words in a sentence.

Hands-on Literacy Learning

Using active learning resources like playdough to teach early literacy skills is a winner in any early childhood classroom. I’ve combined the benefits of playdough (sensory and fine motor skills) with literacy-rich nursery rhymes (fun and familiar language) to encourage active learning and boost engagement in what can sometimes be boring routine word awareness practice.

A Versatile Word Awareness Resource

I wanted a hands-on word awareness activity that could be used in various classroom learning experiences. After all, if you go through the trouble of printing and laminating playdough mats, you want to be able to use them more than once!

You can use these Nursery Rhyme resources over and over! Use them:

• In hands-on literacy investigation areas

• At literacy centers

• For fine motor activities

• During small group literacy rotations

• For independent word work

• In morning tubs

• As busy bags

• For early finishers

• As homework tasks

• Or for informing your assessment grades

This Word Awareness Playdough Resource Contains:

• 35 Nursery rhyme Playdough Mats

• My best-ever playdough recipe

• 35 Nursery rhyme cards with the lyrics for your reference. I like to add mine to a binder ring.

• 3 Learning Prompts

• A teacher checklist to track students' progress and understanding of word awareness.

• 2 Student recording sheets

• A document wallet label to print and help you keep the resources organized.

There’s so much more than printable Nursery Rhyme playdough mats in this comprehensive resource.

How to Use These Nursery Rhyme Playdough Mats to Teach Word Awareness

Each of the 35 Playdough Mats features a familiar sentence from a popular nursery rhyme.

1. Give each student some play dough and a nursery rhyme mat.

2. They develop those essential fine motor skills as they roll the playdough into small balls.

3. Next they place the playdough balls on the designated circles beneath each word in the sentence on their mat.

4. As they say each word, they develop one-to-one correspondence and word awareness by squashing the corresponding playdough ball.

This simple yet highly effective activity will help young children see and hear word boundaries. It reinforces one-to-one correspondence, builds fine motor skills, and promotes counting practice. Such a fun and engaging way to develop word and phonological awareness skills.

I love hands-on learning activities like these because fun and meaningful learning activities mean the learning will stick.

With colourful visuals and an easy-to-follow format, these nursery rhyme themed word awareness play dough mats will become a go-to resource in your early year’s classroom year after year.