This activity is a great way to blend both STEM and some lovely self-regulation, as children take deep breaths to move a ping pong ball through a playdough maze!
Set up Time: 5 minutes
Directions
- Gather together playdough, ping pong balls, and enough straws for the number of children who are participating.
- Invite children to roll long strings of playdough and design your maze together. Do this on a table at children’s height. Alternatively, you can do this on a baking sheet and take it where you need to.
- Invite children to blow air through a straw to move their ping pong ball through the maze!
Note: see our Best Basic Playdough recipe to make your own playdough!
Materials
- Playdough
- Ping pong balls
- Straw
- Baking sheet (optional)
Learning Through Play
Cognitive: Problem Solving – Mazes are a great way to work on problem solving skills! Instead of just doing mazes on a worksheet, we invite children to get through this maze by using their whole body, as they blow on the ping pong ball and view the maze from above.
Social-Emotional: Self-Regulation – One of the greatest ways to calm the nervous system is to take a nice deep breath. This game requires lots of nice deep breaths, so it is a natural way to calm children down. Indeed, you can use this activity to practice what it means to “take a deep breath” so that when they are upset, they will already have this strategy in their repertoire.
School Readiness: Spatial Learning – Mazes are a great way to invite children to use spatial language as they twist and turn and problem solve through the maze! Mazes help to create a sort of mental map, which can help children with navigational activities later on in life.
See this activity in the Rayz Kidz app, along with the other fun STEM activities. Rayz Kidz is your trusted source for play-based activities featuring over 100 themes and 500+ hands-on activities and clear descriptions of the beautiful learning that is happening through play.
