The kids will love making crazy cute Christmas reindeer with this reindeer playdough set up and free printable reindeer playdough accessories!
Try out our easy no-cook chocolate playdough recipe, which is the perfect colour for making reindeer, and have fun adding the free printable reindeer antlers, ears, and noses
My Mum is a little bit obsessed with reindeer. She’s got reindeer that light up, reindeer that sing and dance, reindeer that are beautiful, and reindeer that are really ugly, and once Christmas rolls around, out comes her crazy reindeer collection!
So in honor of my crazy mum and all her reindeer we had some fun making play dough reindeer!
This reindeer playdough invitation to play is so easy to set up, and so much fun. The kids will have a lovely time making all kinds of crazy, cute, and even kinda ugly, playdough reindeer!
How to set up a Reindeer Playdough Invitation to Play
The first thing to do when setting up for some reindeer playdough is to gather some loose parts and accessories.
To make our playdough reindeer I collected a few bits and pieces from around the house that I thought would be fun and useful and match the theme.
For our reindeer play dough set we used:
- Googly eyes
- Sticks
- Curling ribbon cut into small pieces
- Gold ribbon stars
You could also use some buttons, beads, pipe cleaners, or anything else that you have on hand.
Your reindeers will also need some antlers, and you could use sticks or pipe cleaners for antlers, but I made some printable reindeer antlers, ears and noses that we printed out, laminated, cut out, and added to our reindeer play dough. (scroll down to find the free printable reindeer playdough accessories)
Reindeer Playdough Recipe
Since this time of the year is already busy enough, I kept it simple and used an easy no-cook play dough recipe.
And the easiest way to make brown coloured play dough is to add 2-3 table spoons of cocoa as your colouring. Not only does the cocoa make the play dough a nice reindeer brown, it also makes it smell like chocolate, so make sure you remind little ones that it won’t actually taste like chocolate!
Here is our easy no-cook play dough recipe:

Easy No-Cook Chocolate Play Dough!
This easy, no-cook, chocolate, play dough recipe is perfect for making reindeer!
Materials
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1/2 cup salt
- 2 tbsp cream of tar tar
- 2 tbsp of vegetable oil
- 3/4 cup hot water
- 2-3 tbsp cocoa
Instructions
- In a large bowl mix the flour, cocoa, salt and cream of tar tar together.
- Add the oil and mix well.
- Add the hot water a little at a time, mixing well, until it becomes a slightly sticky dough.
- Knead the dough on a floured surface for a few minutes until it becomes soft and workable. If it is still a bit sticky knead in some extra flour.
The boys and I had great fun making some very cute, if a little dopey, looking reindeer!
And Rudolf, with his red nose, got to lead the pack!
Free Printable Reindeer Playdough Accessories.
If you need some antlers, ears and noses for your playdough reindeers, all you need to do is print, cutout and laminate these reindeer playdough accessories.
There are three sets of antlers and ears, plus two brown noses, and one red nose, for Rudolf!
You can download the free printable reindeer play dough accessories here.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. 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.
If you would like some more Christmas play dough fun check out our Christmas play dough mats.
You can buy this set of Christmas themed play dough mats in my shop.
There are six different open-ended designs ready to print and play.
Wow! This is fabulous. Added to my list of play ideas for next week. Thanks!