My son is probably one of the few kids who doesn’t like clay. He doesn’t like the icky feeling that goes along with it. Although he has no problems getting himself dirty, clay is an entirely different story. The most he could do with it was form a ball or flatten it. He wouldn’t create other things the way I’ve seen other kids do it. Timmy received clay gifts the past couple of years. We tried using them but he would stop immediately. He would even complain about the sticky, gooey feeling. I decided to give it a rest and planned to introduce it again. Months later, I came up with fun clay activities that wouldn’t highlight the icky feeling but would still enhance his creativity and develop his fine motor skills (Thank You, Lord, for the ideas!). 🙂
Animal stamping
I mixed 2 colors of clay and flattened it with Timmy’s help. 🙂 I asked him to press his animals’ feet on the clay so he could see the different footprints! He had to press extra hard so he could see the prints. 🙂 Flex those finger muscles!
Getting his animals ready! 🙂
Stamping time! 🙂
Clay Poking
I cut pieces of straw and asked Timmy to poke the clay! This simple activity allowed him to create different scenarios like a forest for the green straws and a birthday cake for the pink ones (he even blew the straw candles and sang Happy Birthday!). 🙂 He also did animal stamping again on his forest. 🙂 He enjoyed it when small pieces of clay got stuck inside the straw! He would press the straw so that the small round pieces of clay would come out. 🙂
Creating his forest. 🙂
Focused straw poking. 🙂
T-Rex invades the forest and leaves footprints!
Pressing hard to see the prints. 🙂
Creating a birthday cake! 🙂
He likes the clay getting stuck in the straw because it looks like a candle. 🙂
Letter Carving
We formed words and pressed the letters on the clay. Timmy removed them so he could see the word we carved on it. 🙂 This is a great fine motor exercise especially if you’re using hard, sticky clay. 🙂
We used his small lacing letters and pressed them on clay. 🙂
Time to remove them! 🙂
Timmy’s icky face. Haha! 🙂
Carefully removing his pressed letters. 🙂
These activities are for clay lovers and clay haters alike. 🙂 Timmy has found new uses for clay after we did these. I was so glad it didn’t go to waste! Sometimes we just need to give our kids different options for them to appreciate the things they initially don’t like. 🙂 Hope you’ll enjoy doing them as much as we did!
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