Easy Toddler craft activities - salt dough Christmas tree decorations

Salt dough is a brilliant activity for toddlers.  It feels good, it is cheap, it washes off and you can do so much with it!

I've made things with salt dough in the past, but not for a long time and this is the first time I've done it with the children.  We made Christmas Tree Decorations, which we've painted with glitter paints and threaded with ribbon ready for the children to give as Christmas gifts to whoever they would like to.

Salt dough recipe:
Use half as much salt as flour and mix to a dough consistency with a little water at a time, usually about the same volume as salt.  I used one cup of flour, half a cup of salt and about half a cup of water and it made two baking trays full of decorations.

What to do:

• Make the dough by mixing the ingredients (you can add food colouring and even glitter at the dough stage if you want).  Knead it well - the more you knead the smoother it will be.
• Roll it out.
• Cut with cookie cutters or just free-form if you prefer.  For Christmas tree decorations or anything else that needs hanging, don't forget to poke a hole through with a skewer at this stage.
• Bake in the oven at 120 C until the dough has completely dried out.  I think I left it in for about two hours, but I'm not sure that this was enough, and now I have the finished items sitting on top of a radiator just to make sure they are completely dry.  Apparently you can also put them in the microwave for two or three minutes.
• Once dried out, paint your creations.  You can use any type of paint - poster paint, acrylic, glitter glue.  You can also varnish with proper varnish or with PVA and water mixed 1:1.
• Thread with ribbon.