Melissa & Doug Shape, Model and Mold

Sweet Pea is 32 months old.

From: Our good friends gave Sweet Pea this Melissa & Doug Shape, Model and Mold Clay Set for Christmas.

Observations: The set comes with 4 different colors of dough and several wooden tools for rolling, cutting and stamping it.  Sweet Pea really loves everything about this kit and has played with it for hours.

The lids of the dough containers double as molds for creating animal shapes (puppy, bunny, frog, etc).  Sweet Pea’s favorite activity is to create these little animals and then make up stories and play with them.

One of my only complaints is that Sweet Pea couldn’t really roll the dough out on her own so she needed quite a bit of help from me with that.  I tried unsuccessfully to show her how to roll out the dough many times, but she just doesn’t have the strength for it.  It makes me think that using a rolling pin might make a good practical life activity.  Does anyone have a recipe for some super soft dough?

Notes from the Trenches: Sweet Pea really liked to take the little dough animals she created and run around the house with them.  If you have ever mixed children and Play-Doh, you probably immediately recognized my rookie mistake.  Unfortunately, the dough breaks up into tiny pieces that get ground into the carpet so we have had to implement a rule that dough is only allowed at Sweet Pea’s little table.

I don’t know if it is intentional or not, but the dough that comes with this set is fruit scented.   Sweet Pea kept saying, “Smells like grape.”  It seems like really bad planning to make something like this that smells so delicious.  Just saying.

Rating: 3 Stars * (Fun, Easy, Independent – if you hide the rolling pin)