My girls love playing with playdough mats and I've become somewhat obsessed with creating them since I discovered Canva, so of course I created some Halloween playdough mats. If you're looking for some fun Halloween sensory play for your kids then download my free playdough mats below and get creative with playdough, loose parts or washable markers.
Playdough is a great sensory base for building finger strength and developing fine motor skills. It also has the adding benefit of sensory input which is often quite soothing for children, which makes it a great medium to use with younger children at home or in daycare or classroom activities to help build little muscles in preparation for writing.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND PLAY WITH YOUR FREE HALLOWEEN PLAYDOUGH MATS
- Download the free template {below}
- Print and laminate for durability
- Use with playdough, loose parts or washable markers
The free printables are a PDF document in A4 size so can be downloaded and printed as is to fit to a page in Australia. If you're printing using US letter size you may need to check the fit to page box. As soon as I printed out our Halloween playdough mats I laminated them so they can be used over and over without getting damaged. If you don't have a laminator you can usually get things laminated at stationary stores for only a few dollars. Alternatively if you want to laminate lots of documents, you can pick up home laminators relatively cheap at Amazon, stationary stores or department stores.
We used our playdough mats with a few different colours of playdough and some loose parts. You can use any loose parts you have on hand, they'd be great with googly eyes, pipe cleaners and black beans.
FREE HALLOWEEN PLAYDOUGH MATS
Please note these printable play mats are for personal or classroom use only, they cannot be reproduced, published or sold in any form on any platform.
Both playdough mats come with a decoration prompt as an idea for how the kids can use the mat, including give the pumpkin a face and give the spider some legs and a face. The designs are deliberately simple to provide a blank canvas so the kids can be as creative as they like. They might want to use playdough or loose parts to follow the prompt, or a mix of both. Alternatively younger kids might just decorate the whole mat instead of doing as the prompts recommend, and that's totally ok!
The beauty of these play mats is every single time children play with them their creations will be different and each child will interpret the prompts differently. Regardless of their final design, they'll be busily developing their fine motor skills while also honing their creativity and imagination.
The girls love trying out different leg and face combinations for the spider playdough mat, the same as they did when we made playdough spiders a little while ago. They're also big fans of the pumpkin playdough mat because they can create different jack-o-lantern faces from happy to sad to a little bit scary like the one my big girl made above.
HALLOWEEN PLAYDOUGH MAT FULL SET
If your kids love these free Halloween playdough mats then they'll love my complete set of Halloween playdough mats available in my Etsy store. My girls loved the two playdough mats I made above so much that I kept creating and came up with lots of other Halloween playdough mats. The full set comes with 10 different mat designs and prompts including:
- Pumpkin - Give the pumpkin a face.
- Witches hat - Decorate the witches hat.
- Spider web - What's crawling on the spider web?
- Cauldron - What's bubbling in the witches brew?
- Broom - Who's riding the broomstick?
- Haunted house - Who's hiding in the haunted house?
- Ghost - Give the ghost a face.
- BOO! sign - Fill in the sign.
- Bat - Give the bat a face.
- Spider - Give the spider some legs and a face.
Disclosure - this post contains some affiliate links for your convenience, which means I may earn a small commission at no cost to you, should you make a purchase.
