Moon Dough Treasure Hunt

We have a new sensory activity for my preschooler that’s been popular here lately:

Moon Dough Treasure Hunts

{Super Simple Preschool Sensory Activity}

(Note: we did this with Moon Dough vs Moon Sand, which is also fun and made by the same company, but the Moon SAND is more messy.  Moon Dough still requires a sweep up after play, but is quite a bit less, umm…sandy.  The company says the current Moon Dough on the market is a new recipe that is less messy, but I still use a cloth under the area where my kids play with this  because we wind up with moon dough crumbs.)

We use our lovely gray moon dough for this (yeah, those individual colors didn’t last long…)

 We have a box of treasures like stones and flat glass gems.  I hide a few gems in the moon dough and my preschooler gets the fun of smooshing the moon dough and finding the treasures.

Moon Dough Activity Extras:

• Have your preschooler count how many objects are in the dough.
• Make two of the same shape moon dough lumps- one with treasures, one without; see if your child can guess which one has the objects in it.  How does he know?
• Ask your child to make a treasure hunt for you.
• Try stepping on the moon dough to locate the treasures (obviously only if you have non-pointy treasures.)
• Make this into a game of pretend about making nests for birds, pirates hiding treasures or fairies hiding presents.

Which one holds the treasures?

This is the kind of activity which of course can be done with regular play dough or other types of clay as well. We’ve just been enjoying the new-to-us texture of the moon dough.

Some people seem to hate moon dough due to the clean up, but I really do find it less messy than moon sand, and if I prepare that I will be needing to sweep afterwards I think it’s fine. I guess I really like it too, because the texture is interesting to me, so I am more likely to sit and play with it with my preschooler.

Have you played with moon dough at all? What do you think?