Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments
Flour, salt and water become something you hang on the tree every year after.
- Age
- Ages 3–8
- Prep
- 10 min
- Play time
- 30 min
- Mess
- Medium
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Where
- Indoor
Why kids love this
There is a moment, about four minutes in, when the flour and salt and water stop being three separate things and turn into dough. Children who have never made anything from scratch find that genuinely astonishing. Then it goes in the oven hard as a biscuit, and they get to paint it. Two activities out of one afternoon, with a gap in the middle where you can get something else done.
What you'll need
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup salt
- 1/2 cup water
- Cookie cutters
- Paint and ribbon
- A drinking straw
How to do it
-
Mix the flour, salt and water into a smooth dough and knead it for two minutes.
-
Roll the dough flat on a floured surface, about a quarter of an inch thick.
-
Press the cookie cutters into the dough and poke a hole near the top of each shape with the straw.
-
Bake at 200°F for two to three hours, or leave them out to air-dry overnight, until they are hard all the way through.
-
Let the paint dry, then thread ribbon through the holes to hang them.
Make it easier
Roll the dough yourself and let them do the cutting. The rolling is the part that needs even pressure, and uneven dough cracks as it dries.
Make it harder
Ask an older child to work out how to make the hole big enough for the ribbon after baking rather than before. It cannot be done  which is a better lesson about planning than being told.
Other ways to play it
- Add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the dough. It does nothing to the texture and the whole house smells like Christmas for a fortnight.
- Press a leaf or a piece of lace into the dough before baking for a texture nobody can identify afterwards.
- Write the year on the back with a fine brush. In ten years that is the detail everyone looks for.
What they're learning
Measuring, kneading and rolling are all hand-strength work. Threading ribbon through a small hole is a fine-motor task most reception classes would set deliberately.
Of all the Christmas crafts for kids we have tried, this is the one that comes back out of the box every December. The ornaments last for years  the first ones we made are chipped now and still go on the tree, which is rather the point.
It is also honest about what it needs: three things you already have, and one wait. Nothing has to be bought specially, which is what puts it at the top of our easy Christmas crafts for kids list, and it is the reason we reach for it before any of the fiddlier crafts for kids in the December box.
Works for a mixed group of ages. A three-year-old presses the cutters and paints; a seven-year-old can roll the dough to an even thickness and thread the ribbon, which is fiddlier than it sounds.
If you are lining up Christmas activities for kids across the whole month, make the dough on the first weekend. The baking takes three hours, so it wants to be the thing you start rather than the thing you squeeze in  and once the shapes are hard they will sit in a tin until somebody has an afternoon free to paint them. Most kids Christmas crafts are over in twenty minutes; this one is deliberately not.