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Crafts with Kids: Mother's Day DIY
Salt Dough crafts are some of the most kid-friendly crafts out there. With only 3 ingredients, it's perfect for the kiddos to help with the flour, salt, and water, and learn how to mix them together.
With Mother's Day right around the corner, we decided to go the DIY route for presents this year, now that Caroline is almost 2 and loves to do crafts. This is a great way to make personalized gifts, fun trinkets, or the ever-popular Christmas ornaments. It's a great way to get the kids involved, AND make a unique present that the grandparents are sure to love.
Because we had a lot of gifts we needed to make, I doubled the recipe - and WOW! It made a lot of dough. However, I wanted to be able to make a few different kinds of things, instead of just handprints or small ornament-sized trinkets. For the grandmothers, we made plaques and for the great-grandmothers handprint bowls (perfect for jewelry or small things), and for Caroline's great-great-grandmother (yes, we have 5 generations!), we made a handprint heart.
I pre-measured all the ingredients so we would need to do is mix them together. If you have older kids, it's a great way to teach how to measure - but I wasn't ready to have a floor full of flour and salt!
Recipe:
4 cups flour
2 cups salt
2 cups water
We mixed together the dry ingredients first, and then slowly poured in the water until it made a dough that was soft enough to roll out. Roll out the dough until it's an even thickness (between 1/4"-1/2"). I cut out the generic shapes of each thing we were making, and then we pressed Caroline's handprint in the dough. She loved it!
After we cut out shapes, pressed her handprints, and set them on a nonstick pad on a baking sheet, I popped them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 60 minutes. Because we made thicker salt dough creations, they were not even close to dry yet (but I needed the oven for lunch!) so I set the crafts out on a drying rack and let them sit overnight. After they were completely dry, it was time to decorate them!
For a less messy decorating tip - use watercolors instead of acrylic paint. Use less water and more paint so it doesn't soak into the salt dough. Watercolors gives the salt dough a gorgeous muted look that you don't get with acrylic paints. (We painted outside so the clean up was easier)
To hang the plaques for the grandmothers, I used coated twine and Caroline picked out some bright colored beads for added decoration. She did great stringing the beads on the ribbon! Doing crafts with her is becoming more and more fun because she gets very engaged. I love watching her in action!
It's the perfect rainy day craft, summertime craft, or craft for any time of the year, and you can make decorations for any season! Using only 3 common, everyday ingredients, I'm sure this won't be the last time we make salt dough crafts!
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