We love Disney’s Moana. Its been over a month and we have been watching the whole movie at least once a week. We get so lost in Moana’s Motonui and Te Fiti’s heart that we almost watch it in silence, in awe of all the green shimmering sea and Maui’s tattoos. Moana has us spellbound. So when I wanted to plan some play based Moana activity for my son this month, I thought “Why not playdough trays?”
Now the first place I went to was of couse Pinterest. And I have a board saved with a million pins, most of which I may never open. That’s how you roll on Pinterest right? *wink* But when I was pinning I had an idea for a playdoh tray to make Tamatoa and his Shiny-ness!
I went around the house, collecting shiny stuff. I did not find a sizeable bunch, but I did find something that kinda looks like Maui’s Fish Hook. Added bonus it was shiny! So I went to the neighbourhood craft store and bought beads, sequins and bells – all shinyyyy!
Moana activity – playdough tray
I had also assumed I had playdough at home. But when I opened the packs, two containers had dried out because of exposure to air. The other one was a mish mash of colours, which may have actually worked to model Tomatoa the crab on, but unfortunately was too little in quantity.
In a spirit of determination I quickly googled, home-made playdough and found a site called DIY Natural which has all things that are natural and can be made at home. I tried hard not to get distracted by the homemade lip-balm and body wash, choosing to focus on the play dough recipe. Their’s was one of the easiest methods I found online (or probably the top ranked one.) Here’s the link to their page for the home made DIY play dough. All i needed was:
- 1 cup of flour (any type their site says. I have used rice flour and white flour or maida too.)
- quarter cup of salt
- 1 cup of warm water
- edible food colours
You can experiment and add glitter or perfumed essential oils too I suppose. I may try that sometime.
Making of Tamatoa – the crab monster from Moana
Once the playdough was made, it was time to make a crab. I watched a few videos on YouTube to do this. Some were absolutely bewildering and some too complicated. But one that I liked and eventually made a crab from was this one.
Moana inspired Playdough tray
Next I assembled the playdough tray. I used a paint mixing pallette which has several wells and filled them with many shiny objects that I had accumulated. I added silvery bells, sequins, jewels, golden craft roses, some shells (because under sea), some random pompoms that were floating about the playroom (as they usually do.)
The next step was to introduce tray, playdough and toddler. This was one of the first times we made a playdough play tray and he was a bit lost on what he is supposed to do. We talked about Moana the movie, how she finds Maui and travels under the sea to find Tamatoa and how he is so shiny! I started sticking the materials on to the crab back and he soon joined in.
He didn’t stop until the crab’s shell was quite full. He then began removing some of the shinies and placing them back in the tray, before placing the sequins in a vertical position so as to hold more shiny stuff on the crab shell. Lesson in space management?
He was mighty proud of his little Tamatoa shiny crab and we took lots of pictures to send to daddy in office and our friends and family.
I hope you do try this Moana activity with your little Moana fans. Its easy peasy and took me less than 30 minutes from idea to offering my son the tray. I am sure this would also make a great game for a Moana themed party.
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