Halloween Salt Dough

Basic Salt Dough Recipe:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
1 cup warm water

Combine salt and water, and let sit for a minute or 2 to let salt dissolve. Add flour, and mix until dough starts to form. Knead with your hands in the bowl, or on a floured surface until a smooth dough has been achieved. Create project. Bake in a 200 degree F oven for 1-4 hours or until completely dry. Paint and embellish as desired!

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I split our dough in half, and rolled half with a floured rolling pin. Then used Halloween cookie cutters to make shakes of flying Halloween creatures (bats, witches, and ghosts.) I then used a straw to put holes in the Halloween shapes for hanging later. The other half of the dough I split between my kids for them to make pumpkins. (Note that since these are preschool and younger children, the pumpkins were solid and took longer to dry in the oven. Older children can roll our their dough and form it over a ball of aluminum foil to get their shape without using as much dough/ drying time.) I had each child remove a small piece of their dough, then roll the rest between their hands to create a ball shape. They place the ball on the table and made an indentation on top of the ball with their finger. Then used the small removed piece of dough, to attach as a stem. We baked these, then painted them orange with brown stems on a different day. After we painted the pumpkins, I provided Halloween colors of paint, and let the kids paint the cutouts. After they dried, we strung yarn through these, and tied them to baby hangers to hang as Halloween mobiles!

An unpainted salt dough pumpkin, and the painting underway!


Reagan's mobile


Adam's Mobile


Oh, and since we had the paint out, I let the kids paint pumpkins on canvas bags for Trick-Or-Treating! :-)

Halloween Craft Fun!

Starting last week we've been having a lot of fun with Halloween activities. We have been reading lots of fun Halloween books, and I've worked on coming up with several Halloween and fall themed crafts for the kids.

Last week we did drawings that we embellished with foamie Halloween stickers. Stickers are always a hit with the kids and they really enjoyed this one. I'm watching a friend's child, so she and Reagan had a great time doing this together, but before I could get a picture of Reagan work, Adam (who was napping at the time and missed the activity, got a little jealous, and tore all her foamies off!) Ugh. It was fun though, and there are letters in our set, so Reagan spelled out her name on her paper, and we helped the friend do that as well. Then the girls just had fun picking out letters, and naming them before adding them to their masterpieces.

On Friday we made salt dough for the first time! I rolled half and did cut outs with holes for hanging, and split the other half between the kids. Rob was home, so he helped out, and had a good time helping the kids make pumpkins out of their salt dough. I baked them, and we're planning on painting today! I'll post pictures of the salt dough, with a tutorial for our projects a little later. :-) On Friday we also made spiders out of egg cartons. I'll also post a tutorial for this simple and fun craft. :-)

One of Reagan's favorite Halloween books is The Biggest Pumpkin Ever. I think it especially resonates with her because we grew some of our own pumpkins this year. We had to stop by the hardware store for something on Saturday, and stopped to pick up some seeds for next year's vegetable garden (that we are already planning). So of course we had to get Big Max pumpkin seeds (they can grow to be 100 lbs or more!) Next year should be lots of fun, and maybe well get a prize winning pumpkin grown for the fair next year even.

Yesterday we did out first tap dancing class at home. Reagan has been very enthusiastic about this for awhile, but both pairs of shoes we had, were too small. Oma finally found a pair that would fit here, and they came in a package this week, so we were set to begin. Of course Adam wanted to dance to, and luckily one of those too small pairs fit him! The kids had a great time... even though they mostly just liked making a lot of noise. Reagan did get the general idea of some basic steps, and Adam tried very hard. I think well need quite a few more lessons before there's any level of mastery though. lol

Reagan of course, also sat down and did some work on her workbook, and confirmed for us that she can read all of her colors. She can do most activities in the preschool workbook without an instruction, but was reading what colors they wanted her to color specific things and doing it. She also spent a good amount of time in the morning sitting and reading Hop on Pop. She was actually reading it at first (and doesn't have it memorized- we've only read it once,) but then she got lazy and started doing it mostly based on memory and the pictures, rather than actually reading. But it's a great start! She really could read more by herself if she were willing to do it. It's too much work though. :-P