Colored Salt Dough Ornaments

My 3 year old likes me to snuggle with her at night until she falls asleep.  Often I will read on my iPad, or scroll through Pinterest looking for crafts, recipes, sewing ideas,art projects, 4 H ideas, or educational things for our homeschool.  The other night I came across this pin.  We have made salt dough ornaments one other time, but we painted them.  I would have never though of coloring them!

What We Did

First we made the salt dough using this recipe.

4 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 1/2 cups cold water

Mix the flour and salt and add in the water.  I did one cup first and then added in the other half cup slowly.  You may need to add a bit more water if the dough doesn't come together well.

Then, we divided the dough and gave a chunk to each of the children.  They rolled out the dough and used a variety of Christmas cookie cutters to cut out different shapes.

Next I put a hole in the top of each ornament using a plastic straw.

After that we baked them in a 275 degree oven for 2 hours.  You want to bake them until they are hard but not brown.

I put a paper towel in front of each child and put a bin of crayons on the table.  I handed out the ornaments one at a time and left the others to stay warm on the stone.  The children chose their crayons and colored on the ornaments.  The ornaments were warm enough to melt the crayons but not too warm that they couldn't touch them.

Nana helped too.

If the ornaments got too cool, the colors did not work as well.  You can leave them in the oven on warm and only take out a few at a time to keep them warm.  Just watch the bottoms!

They turned out really good!

After they were all colored, we strung them with green yarn and hung them on the tree.  This craft was a big hit and I love how they look.  I hope they last a long, long, time.

Happy Homeschooling!