Free Printable - Christmas Playdough Mats

You are invited to download the Christmas inspired playdough mats – learning printables for preschool and kindergarten children. Use this resource with playdough outlines to create hands-on festive activities for your students to supplement their learning in various areas such as literacy and creativity. This resource is going to be an exciting addition to your holiday work shelves in the Montessori and early childhood classrooms.

Playdough sensory activities along with coloring and cutting activities are beneficial for a child’s fine motor development. Encourage children to create Christmas elements such as star, Christmas tree or a gift using playdough templates. These mats can be also used with loose parts and various art mediums such as crayons, paints, pastels, and pencils.

Here is what’s included:

mats featuring Christmas themed black and white outline shapes with tracing and initial sounds x 17
mats featuring Christmas themed color outline shapes with lables and initial sounds x 12

Age: Preschool ages 2.5 – 5 years

Subjects and uses in the classroom: Christmas, Winter, Literacy Centers, Fine motor, Prewriting, Creative thinking

Here are some of my recommendations on how you can use these mats

Choose mats that appeal to your students most – color or pages with black and white outlines. Print and laminate the mats. Laminating is optional if you print on cardstock and don’t plan to reuse the mats next year.

Gather or make playdough using bright Christmas colors. Also gather erasable markers or pencils.

Invite the child to decorate the mat using playdough – make the shape and letter it begins with, and color the borders. As an additional fine motor challenge, the child might enjoy using loose parts such as beads to decorate the playdough.

There are a couple of different methods children can use playdough to make the shapes and letters – by pinching off small pieces and applying them on the mats or by rolling sausage-like parts and arranging them on the surface. My advice would be – to let the child decide how they wish to handle their work and exercise their problem-solving abilities.