Create Play Food Using Salt Dough

As we shared before, the kids love playing in their play kitchen especially when we have other kids over to visit. I remember when we first bought the kitchen though I was a little bummed to discover the cost of play food. We've been able to find some good deals over the years on a few pieces, but we've also discovered the fun of making our own.

We made a set a few years ago when Little Brother was still an infant, but it was definitely time to try it again. 

Indian Corn Mosaics and More

This week we've been sharing different activity ideas we had for exploring "indian corn." Our final activity put to use the kernels we'd taken off the cobs the other day by combining them with salt dough to make mosaic decorations.

Indian Corn Mosaics (with 15+ Indian Corn Activities and Crafts)
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We've used basic salt dough before, we find it an easy material for even the littlest of hands to create with. For these creations we tried something we had not tried before, pressing and baking something into the salt dough. 

Homemade Dinosaur Bones

We've definitely been feeling a little frazzled here between the hot and humid weather, a sick toddler, and several days cooped up in the house. Luckily, kicking off our dinosaur week is proving to be a great distraction.

Dinosaur books are something I've been collecting for a while now, so we officially kicked off the week by reading several different dinosaur books. Later this week we'll be creating a dinosaur bone excavation, and while I had planned on creating the bones, I realized it would be much more fun to get Big Brother involved.

Homemade Dinosaur Bones

These homemade dinosaur bones were easy to make and are proving to have more than one way to use them.

Stamped Salt Dough Ornaments

It's amazing to me, but there are only 8 days left until Christmas and we still have lots of projects on our list to complete. But, it really is possible to create quick, handmade projects and treats even with just over a week to go. Our hope is to share some of our ideas with you in the next few days. (And I say hope, because on top of the busy season we seem to be in spell where unexpected events keep taking us away from our projects and posting. But we'll give it our best attempt.)

Last week we worked on these stamped salt dough ornaments. There are lots of different salt dough ornament ideas floating around on Pinterest these days, which inspired us to create up our own idea.

To begin with we used a basic salt dough recipe: 

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup cold water

First I mixed the flour and salt together in a bowl, then added the water and stirred with a wooden spoon. Once it had formed into a ball I placed it onto the counter and kneaded it until is was fully blended and not lumpy. (It still feels kind of grainy to the touch.)

We used two kinds of stamps and presses. The first I made using small wooden snowflake cutouts which I hot glued to corks. I thought this would give some height off the dough so we only got the image and not marks from the sides. 

The second set were more traditional stamps. For the most part we were doing snowflakes, but we couldn't resist trying the poinsettia too.

In order to make our ornaments, I rolled the dough flat until it was about 1/4 inch thick. Big Brother then used one of our round biscuit cutters to cut out circles. 

Next he pressed or stamped images into each circle. He liked experimenting with mixing different sizes on each ornament. 

When he was done cutting and pressing, we baked the ornaments on a cookie sheet in a 250 degree (Fahrenheit) oven for about 2 hours. When they were done we had these creamy white snowflake ornaments. 

The next day we decided to paint some of the baked ornaments. We used acrylic craft paints, including glitter acrylic paints which come from a Martha Stewart line sold at JoAnn Fabric Stores. 

In the end we liked the glitter paints best as they were not too dense in color because they had more of a clear base. We also decided not to paint all of them, as we liked many of the ornaments plain. 

We like giving each grandparent a handmade ornament every year, and we're considering using these this year. They also make nice add-ons to wrapped gifts. But, we still have some more fun, handmade projects to try out this week. 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties. 

Turkey Projects for Little Hands

We're a little behind in posting this week, so we're going to share 3 projects in one update. All of the projects, with varying adult assistance, could by done by toddlers through elementary aged kids. They all use craft supplies you probably already have on hand, so they can even be done last minute Thursday morning just after the real turkey goes in the oven.

Salt Dough Place Setting Turkeys

We actually made these last year the day before Thanksgiving as a way to decorate our table. I made the salt dough using a basic salt dough recipe and then shaped the dough into small birds. Big Brother (who was two at the time) put the feathers into the backs of the turkeys and dotted their eyes with sharpies. We also added beaks and wattles using red and orange pipe cleaners cut into small pieces. We let them air dry over night.

Turkey Paper Plate Hat

This was a fun project we created recently. I was inspired by these great, long feathers I found at Wal-Mart. First we painted the bottom side of a paper plate brown. After the paint had dried we cut out a bird shape with a circle behind it. The bird shape is able to prop upwards and the circle is to be worn like a visor on top of the head. We then taped the feathers onto the back of the bird body and glued on an eye, construction paper beak, and construction paper wattle. 

Handprint & Footprint Turkeys

There are a lot of different ideas on Pinterest these days about how to create a hand print turkey, this is our spin on it. First we painted Big Brother's hand, each time a different color and printed them onto the paper in a semi-circle. We then painted his foot and big toe brown with his little toes orange, and printed it onto the paper upside down. After everything had dried we added googley eyes and a construction paper beak. 

We made a couple of different turkeys, and even had Little Brother make one too! 

We've been having lots of fun creating these different projects. Do you have a favorite turkey project that you like to do with kids? We'd love to have hear your project ideas in the comments. 

And just because I couldn't resist, here's a quick snapshot at what out kitchen floor can look like when we're having fun. 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties. 

Salamanders!

One great thing about rainy days is that it brings out the salamanders. As we had a lot of rainy days last week it proved a perfect time to go on a salamander search in the woods. I've loved searching for salamanders since I was a kid; my brother and I used to go together, combing our driveway after storms. And even now, whenever I run after a rainy spell I always stop along my way to move these little, orange creatures off of the road. But what was really special last week is we could do our search as a whole family.

First we read one of my favorite books for connecting kids to nature, called The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer.