Bilingual Language Activity: Learn Colours With Play Dough

Play dough is an amazingly versatile resource for all kinds of play activities. We use it a lot in many different ways. We have used it with monochrome buttons for numeracy, creating pictures and mark-making. I wrote about using play dough to keep toddlers occupied whilst homeschooling older children.

We always make our own play dough. It's so easy, it feels better to handle and is safer for young children to play with as it uses natural, edible ingredients! You can find a great recipe here.

I am always looking for new and interesting ways to build foreign language learning into our homeschool. As we love play dough, I thought it would be a great way to learn about colours. If you have a selection of different colours, you can start by talking about the different colours of play dough you have.

I got some play dough, buttons and beads and let the children experiment for a while.

Both children rolled out their play dough.

R started to put buttons randomly into it.

Show me the black buttons.

I told him some colours, one at a time, in Turkish, and asked him to point out the colours on his creation.

Place a green button on the play dough

Then I asked him to get more colours out of the tub and place them on the play dough.

Place three white buttons on the play dough

You can even go on to teach numbers by asking your child to place a certain number of buttons on the play dough.

Creating a rainbow

D decided to create a rainbow with all the different coloured buttons and beads.

She used the wooden rainbow toy as inspiration. As she was doing this we spoke about what the different colours were in Turkish.

What a beautiful creation!

Turkish phrases

kırmızı red

mavi blue

yeşil green

sarı yellow

mor purple

pembe pink

turuncu orange

siyah black

beyaz white

kahverengi brown

renk colour
renkler colours
Senin en sevdiğin renk hangisi? What is your favourite colour?
Benim en sevdiğim renk pembe. My favourite colour is pink.
gökkuşağı Rainbow
düğme Button
düğmeleri Buttons
Bana siyah düğmeyi göster. Show me the black buttons.
Hangisi siyah düğme? Which is the black button?
Oyun hamuru Play dough
Yeşil düğmeyi oyun hamuruna koy. Put a green button on the play dough.
Iki beyaz düğmeyi oyun hamuruna koy. Put two white buttons on the play dough.