How to Make a Landscape
with Play-Doh

Medium: Play-Doh with shape cutters

It's so simple to make a Play-Doh landscape. This activity allows children to make a landscape rich in color without making a mess. You don't even have to mix Play-Doh colors for this project. All of the colors will remain intact. Spread out blue playdough, and cut out squares with a square cutting tool. Lay out two rows of blue squares on paper. You now have a sky. (see picture below).

The blue sky is a good way to introduce the concept of background to a child. Or you can explain what a grid is. Grids, like the square patterns we are laying out here, make sure everything is set in order. This landscape is symmetrical.

View the demonstration on YouTube

Making a Play-Doh Landscape

Now that we have a sky, let's make the grass. Roll out green playdough. Cut out green squares. Lay two rows of green squares beneath the rows of blue squares. Now we have grass to complement the sky.

Now for the fun part. We can fill in our landscape however we want. Use your imagination. Use cutouts or make objects from scratch. I used cutouts to put a house and a tree in the background, a bunny in the middle ground, and a flower and a butterfly in the foreground. The flower was made by cutting out a star shape and then placing a yellow circle on top for pollen.

Now you can move objects around on your landscape to your enjoyment. What landscapes can you make with simple shapes?