Salt Dough Decorations

                                                              Salt Dough Decorations

Salt Dough Recipe;

1 cup of salt,

2 cups of flour

and 3/4 to 1 cup of lukewarm water.

(The amt of water depends on relative humidity.)

Mix the salt and flour together in a bowl, using spatula. Then add the water until a large ball has formed. Knead ball of dough at length on a lightly floured work surface

(somewhere smooth and easy to clean).

The quality of dough you finish with will depend on the time spent on kneading. If the dough is sticky add a mix in the right proportions of flour and salt, or keep adding flour to your bench.

 

Salt dough variations;

You can use coarse sea salt to get a rustic effect if you want.

Replace 2 tablespoons measure of flour with buckwheat flour

thus the mixture is easier to work with.

You can add glycerin which makes modelling easier,

or wallpaper paste (glue) to make stronger models.

Salt dough can be coloured prior to baking with natural colour e.g. coffee grounds, tumeric, chocolate powder or with gouache or food colouring.

 

Any leftovers will keep for a couple of days in a sealed container in the fridge.

 

Decorations.

Last Christmas Dylan's Preschool made christmas stars to thread & hang

which is where i got the idea.

I used cookie cutters for my shapes. roll out dough with a floured rolling pin to @ 1cm thick.

Cut out shapes required ( I used a tree, star, love heart & teddy bear cookie cutter). Re group leftover dough & repeat until used up.

I did actually put food colouring in my mix of green in half & red in half but it comes out quite a soft colour & for this purpose i wanted bright colour.

Make a hole in your decorations big enough (for the child

to thread) prior to cooking them. {If you forget you could drill holes but they may crack if your cooked dough is thin.}

I used a pointy nozzle from a paint bottle to make my holes.

Bake in a slow oven, so i baked mine at 120oc for a few hours to ensure they were really hard & dry.

 

Allow to cool, then paint (acrylic paint) & decorate. we painted ours then sprinkled glitter on the wet paint also. Using wrapping ribbon we threaded each decoration & hung some on the ceiling & some on our xmas tree.

Now a wee tip if you live in a humid climate lacquer them also, as the humidity can make them go soft again (like a stale biscuit & drop off their ribbon) Ideally spray can varnish or lacquer if you can get it, if not paint on varnish. You can re-dry them in the oven if they're not varnish'd & have gone soft (i only did this once while waiting to go shopping & grab some varnish, i don't know if you can keep putting them back in the oven, the glitter & paint were not affected.)

We have our decorations stored in the dry hot water cupboard in an airtight container & hopefully theyre not going mouldy!!! As next christmas i want to get them out & show Dylan what he made when he was 2 , he sat for over an hour decorating them i have never seen him sit so still. I did the process over a couple pf days to keep up interest first day we made the dough & cut them & baked them. Then a couple of days later we painted , decorated & threaded them, then next day we hung them.

They make a great pressie wrapped in cellophane with a ribbon too.

:D

 

Painted Origami Lanterns

What to do with colouring in or paintings???? Make pretty origami!

I wanted to spice up Eli’s night light, currently a string of fairy lights. I was surfing around on the web and saw some pretty party origami lanterns on fairy lights, challenge accepted. I looked at 2 videos on how to fold them, not too tricky for this origami spas I then had 2 attempts on a bit of scrap paper. I looked at the stack of paper we already had but most of it was done on cardboard and I thought it would be too thick. So Flynn and I made some papers. I pre-cut the paper to squares, them I drew with pen some sea related patterns, I then highlighted bits with crayons especially the white crayon to get the wax resist magic for Flynn. I watered down some food colouring in a cupcake baking tray, and we set to work spreading the colour over the crayon. I let it dry and then I started folding the lanterns the last bit where you blow into it so it expands out, is fantastic! Then you take your little paper balloons and pop your twinkle lights into the hole that you breathed into, they stay on really well, till your 1 year old yanks at them.

 I am so impressed they look really pretty and Eli was impressed too. When he saw them there was a lot of baby natter and pointing until I took him to them he was so smiley and pleased and that makes me pleased it was worth it. These would look great for a party, and they would definitely work with any drawings or paintings you already have on paper, but if you want to do it as a special activity glitter paint would look fantastic and or some thinner paper like rice paper. There are also stunning origami papers available, or wrapping papers. Happy folding.  

video on how to fold your lanterns

Preschool Style Bottle Rockets

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, launch
Ok take a soft drink bottle or juice bottle, pop some stickers on for windows, cut some triangles then snip in the middle of the longest side a cm cut, fold in opposite directions and stick tape the wings to the bottom of the rocket. Sticky tape some wrapping string or fabric leftovers or ribbon on the bottom in flame-ish colours, this helps with the whooshing effect.  Kids can fill bottle with sequins, little balls of alfoil, glitter, pom poms whatever you like really. In one bottle each boy got tiny drip of washing up liquid and about 1 ½ cups of water, in the other bottle they got about ¼ cup of baby oil and the rest of the bottle filled up with water. Some food colouring was added to both, lids secured tightly and then taped up so little people don’t consume what’s inside.  Shake up and see the different kinds of bubbles.  We then launched ours down the slide.

 Recycling plastic bottles is a great cheap toy; you can also make noisy ones with coloured rice or barley, lentils or split peas. We have a big container that sits in outside full of interesting combinations. Eli likes throwing them about, Flynn uses them as fuel to fill up his ride on cars. A yellow dish liquid one got taken to the shops yesterday it was “Spiderman’s kaboom bottle”  “you push the button on the top mum and kaboom spider webs whoosh whoosh out” see so many uses, great imaginative play.

ps. thanks Alicia for teaching me the joy a plastic bottle can bring to small ones x

slime

Slime

1 cup of pure soap flakes ( lux flakes) dissolved in 2 litres of boiling water in a bucket, 1/2 hour to set.

Get as creative as you like, I got a whole bunch of different size containers, some food colouring, glitter, stars, and hundreds & thousands.

I poured the soap mix into the the containers, and then added different colours and in some of the containers i also put glitter in some stars, & hundreds & thousands, essential oils in others.

kitchen utensils e.g. sieve, whisk, cup, spoon, egg slicer, chop stick, brush etc.

The first time when i did slime for D he was 1, it took him ages to touch it he pushed it around with a chopstick eventually hopping into the baby bath with it.

i set up some other ingredients to play with e.g. bicarb, vinegar, cornflour, lemon.

D had a full afternoon with slime, first he mixed up a batch using all his ingredients, commenting on the colour changes and his cooking methods - he was baking me a cake. He tipped out the batch onto a tray, then onto the bricks and had a wonderful time smooshing it intro the bricks.

after a recess & snack the slime got all mixed into one big mass, then some made mud for his 4wd to drive through.

Then a couple of cups of slime got put into the bath to bath in. It gave the shark and crocodile plenty to do. It turned quite black but dont fret afterall it is just soap. :D