Grab some playdough and make some people with these free printable people play dough mats. There are bodies and faces to print, make and decorate.
My kids used to have a ‘fashion model’ colouring book filled with blank bodies that you could draw on, adding clothes, hair and make-up. It was lots of fun, and gave me the idea of making something similar for play dough, something that could be re-used over and over.
These people play dough mats are such a simple idea, but they are so much fun and inspire so much creativity!
Little ones will love making silly faces and decorating the bodies, and older kids will love adding all kinds of creative details to their playdough people.
Here’s a fun new playdough recipe to try!
Making playdough people and faces is a great activity for an ‘All about me’ theme, or just a fun activity that focuses on getting to know yourself.
My middle child loved making someone who looked “just like me”, choosing the palest skin tone (he is very fair!) and double checking that his eyes were in fact blue.
These play dough mats also offer lots of opportunities to learn about body parts, clothes, and the ways people are the same as well as different. Making play dough faces is also a great way to explore ideas around feelings and emotions.
It’s also just a lot of fun to choose a body or a face and then get crazy with play dough and accessories! Get creative and design some clothes, shoes or elaborate accessories. Or even turn your person into a monster!
Add a few loose parts and play dough accessories to make it even more creative and fun.
We used :
- googly eyes
- sequins
- pasta
- glass gems
- pony beads
- pipe cleaners
- rolling pins
- plastic knives
You could also use :
- wool
- fabric scraps
- a garlic press (for cool hair!)
- toothpicks
- cut up straws
- cookie cutters
- scissors
Download the Free Printable People Playdough Mats.
These people play dough mats comes in two sets – bodies and faces. There are four skin tones in each set and all you need to do is print them, laminate (or use a dry erase pocket – affiliate link) and you are ready to create.
You can download the people play dough mats here.
You can download the faces play dough mats here.
These printables are A4 sized pdf files, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open them. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
We’d love to see what you create with these people play dough mats.
If you share a photo of your people playdough creations on instagram I’d love it if you’d tag me (@picklebums) so I can check it out!
More Play Dough Mats
If you like these playdough mats you might like some of our other free printable play dough mats.
And if you really, really love my free playdough mats and would like to support my small business, you might like to check out some of my playdough sets in my shop.
These are seriously fabulous. I can’t wait to get creative myself! LOL
They turned out fabulous!! We are going to have to give this a go! :) Thanks for sharing – you create such wonderful printables!
Kate, this is one of the best Playdough activities I’ve seen yet!
Thanks for sharing! What a great idea!
Kate these are AWESOME! R is going to love these.
This is amazing!We are doing this today!
These are brilliant. My son just opened a new container of play clay yesterday. Do you know the book my Robert Munsch about play clay?
I will have to search for that book at the library! We love Robert Munsch! His website is fab too!
Such a wonderful idea! Very clever!! :-)
What an awesome idea. Thanks x
Hi Kate,
I can’t open the printable play dough mat faces. I was able to do the people but not faces. Any clues? It’s a great idea!
Cheers
Emma
Sorry you are having trouble with the faces Emma…
Do you get a specific error message when you try to open the file?
Did you try downloading them again… perhaps they were corrupted on the way down?
Kate – you are such a creative gem. What a winner of an activity!
Can I say BRILLIANT? And can I say it again?
Looks so so fun! I hope Aarya likes it too :)
What a fabulous play resource. I’m impressed by the playdough plaits. :)
Kate, thank you so much for including us in your post! I love your colourful and gorgeous creations. As you know we are huge fans of play dough dress ups too – they’re always lots of fun to create. Play dough plaits must be the flavour of the month, my daughter has been including them in her play dough and craft creations too :)
Love, love, love these. Thank you for sharing, I cannot wait to use these with my kindy and pre-primary students :)
Hi! Love these! The faces doesn’t work for me either. No error message, just keeps running and running. ?
It must just be the heavy load on my server… perhaps try again now that the demand is a bit less? If you still have problems let me know.
Thank you, lovely Lady, for sharing this brilliant resource! What an awesome activity and such a helpful tool for the little ones. So many avenues to explore and engage them! :)
I love these, Kate! It’s awesome that you included a number of different shades! Thanks so much for sharing your awesome printables. I featured your post as the Free Printable of the Day at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page and on Pinterest. :)
These are lovely! Thanks for sharing!