Salt Dough | Rubbish Craft for Toddlers

1. If you are going to hang them on a tree thread the string through the hole before small children paint it. They will paint over the hole.

2. One shape is never enough.

3. Small children love painting salt dough, but then small children love painting anything.

4. Mums and carers of small children like painting salt dough.

I still have a tub of shapes left here so I think my children and I will be doing some more painting over the next couple of weeks.

As it was the last toddlers befoe Christmas today I also set out these to make:

The photo really doesn’t do these justice, I love these. From left to right are my effort, my daughter’s effort (by far the best I think) and my son’s effort.

In case you can’t work out what these are let me tell you.

I have called them Springy Santas.

You will need: toilet roll inner or cardboard tube, scissors, red paint, glue, pink paper and cotton wool.

Cut around the toilet roll inner so that it makes a spiral (you need to cut at angle to the base).

Paint it red.

Cut a face (half oval shape) out of pink paper, add cotton wool to make a beard.

Stick on painted toilet roll inner.

Add a little bit of cotton wool right at the end of spiral to make a bobble on his hat.

Hope this is clear.

I think cutting up the toilet roll inners satisfies the mathematician in me, the spirals you can create are very nice!And the Father Christmi look quite sweet too- the possibilities for these spirals are endless, no doubt the basic idea will evolve into something else on here next year.

Wow this feels like a very long post- no more toddler craft until next year now. Have a very Happy Christmas.

1. It is very easy to make. Simply mix 1 part salt with 2 parts flour (measure by volume not weight) and then mix in about 1 part water to make a nice dough. I used 1 (half pint) jugful of salt, 2 jugfuls of flour and about 1 jugful of water.

2. If the dough is too wet just work in more flour.

3. Do not leave the box of flour within reach of 3-year-old son and nip out of the room for 30 seconds.

4. Make sure dough is well squished with no air bubbles before you cut the shapes out. Try and roll it out as flatly as possible.

5. Biscuit cutters work really well to cut out shapes. Remember to put holes in the top before drying them out if you are going to hang them from a tree .

6. Small children have to place cutters right in the centre of the dough. This is one of those times when you realise your mum was right and it is best to cut things out starting at the edge.

7. Once cut out you need to cook it to take out all the moisture.

8. You can cook it in a microwave (about 3 minutes on full power).

9. If you have a lot to cook (maybe enough for a whole toddler group of children) you should really let the microwave cool down between each batch. (I found this out when I made salt dough shapes in April).

10. You can cook it in a low oven until it feels completely dry. If it still feels squidgy in the middle it probably needs a bit longer.

11. Apparently it can also be air-dried.

12. When dry you can decorate it with paint, glitter, anything at all. Just dust the flour off first

13. Anything you make will last for ages if you have dried it out properly. I still have some salt dough letters we made for last Christmas and some of the ones we made in April.

14. Salt dough is amazing! Cheap, easy and easily decorable.

15. Decorable is not a proper word. I meant to say easy to decorate.

Hmm OK, so this week we (DS and I) have mainly been making salt dough stars and bells with holes in the top to be painted on Thursday at toddlers. DS’s focus was mainly the rolling out and squidging up the bits, a bit of cutting out and bit of adding more flour. I did try to encourage him to try to make his initial out of the dough but that was swiftly forgotten when he spotted a free rolling-pin.