Salt Dough Recipe
Easy Kids Crafts

Our simple homeschool salt dough recipe is perfect for young children to make all sorts of fun objects from play fruit to key rings.

You'll find:

  • A list of simple homeschool recipe ingredients
  • Handy tips
  • Activities and ideas for fun things to make with salt dough
  • Lots more easy kids crafts to try from marbling to wind streamers

We've used our tried and tested homeschooling dough recipe for years and it's never failed yet!

homemade salt dough

Our homeschooling recipe is really easy.

What's more, you'll find loads of things here even very young kids can make that you can actually use in the house - like fridge magnets, napkin rings and coil pots for putting things in.

That makes salt dough even more exciting!

Homeschool Salt Dough

All you need is:

  1. 300g (10 oz.) plain flour
  2. 300g (10 oz.) salt
  3. 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  4. 200 ml water to mix into the salt dough recipe

Optional:

  1. If you don't want plain non-coloured salt dough, use Dr Oetker food coloring gels (the food colors make your dough look really pretty)
  2. Clear varnish (stops your creations going moldy)
  3. Poster paints or acrylic paints, PVA glue to seal
salt dough recipe ingredients

Instructions:

  • Mix the flour, salt and oil together and add the water until you get a soft dough.
  • Add food coloring gels if you have them.
  • Add more water to our homeschooling recipe if you need to.
  • Sprinkle some flour on a table where you're going to work, turn the salt dough out and knead it until it's smooth and stretchy.

That's it! You're ready to have fun with our homeschooling easy kids crafts.

Once you've finished making your crafts with the dough, you'll need to put them on some wax paper (called greaseproof paper in the UK) on a baking sheet in the oven.

Bake in the oven at 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 for 20 minutes.

If you haven't used food colouring gels, you can get your children to paint their creations with poster or acrylic paint.

I never bother varnishing them; I think salt dough is best used to have fun on a rainy day.

By the time the mold appears, our crafts have usually met a timely end in the homeschool trashcan (shhh!)

salt dough and cookie cutters

Salt Dough Tips

Jeni and her family from my Courageous Homeschooling Facebook support group have some great tips.

Jeni uses food coloring gels (see list of ingredients) to make her salt dough look great. 

She suggests that if you want to make something long-lasting - she suggests a yarn bowl - to paint it with slightly watered down pva glue first to seal so it lasts and doesn't absorb moisture over the years. Then you can either add some paper mache over the top or just paint it with acrylics.

"Top tip for salt dough - don’t store it in the fridge for three days and still expect it to be instantly useable...It took way too much extra effort on my part this morning to knead in all the extra flour to each individual blob of coloured dough (which I’d already split up between the kids) to make it a useable consistency again!"

~ Jeni

Easy Kids Crafts

There are lots of things your kids can make with homeschool salt dough.

I think it's nice to have some crafts easy for kids that your children can make from very young which have some sort of practical use.

Here are some fun homeschooling ideas to show you how to make the most out of our salt dough!

N.B. Tree decoration and key rings will need attaching to a ribbon so remember to make a hole in your decoration with a cocktail stick for your ribbon to go through before you bake it in the oven!

Salt Dough Creations

salt dough creations

I have borrowed from Jeni's family again to show what fun you can have with salt dough.

Adding feathers and creating inventive bird nests is just one way to make this a really fun craft; I love the little birds and the use of pipe cleaners to make a basket handle.

Christmas Tree Decorations

Use Christmas cookie cutters in the shape of trees and stars to make your dough decorations. Actually, just about any object your child makes would hang nicely from a tree.

Birds, fish, bells...they all work perfectly made with our homeschool salt dough.

We've got lots more homeschooling ideas for the festive season, including decorated pinecones and snowflakes, on our page on easy Christmas ideas for kids.

Napkin rings

salt dough napkin rings

One of the crafts easy for kids is making circles out of the salt dough.

You can turn those circles into jewelry as homeschool bangles but they also make good napkin rings.

Modeling

 You can make models out of salt dough. 

You'll see my daughter Catherine has made a cat using our homeschool Play Dough Recipe. It's just as easy to make as salt dough and uses very similar ingredients.

You can even make it smell nice by adding peppermint or vanilla.

paper mache projects

Fun paper mache projects

Homeschool key rings

Another very easy kid's craft is to use our homeschooling salt dough recipe to make key rings.

Dough Coil Pots

salt dough coil pot

Lots of bangles laid one on top of the other make easy kids crafts as a coil pot. Your children could use the pots for their treasures, jewelry or how about a bowl of homeschool play fruit?

Play food

How about pretend strawberries for lunch?

Easy crafts for kids work well if they are combined with fantasy food.

You can make play cakes, homeschool cookies and treats along with play fruit and even a play meal!

As you'll see in our homeschool activities for 2 year olds, it's nice to be a toddler cook alongside Mom using our salt dough recipe.

Homeschool fridge magnets

salt dough fridge magnet

You'll just need to buy some small magnets (or re-cycle some) and glue an animal your kids have made onto it.

Fish shapes work well for easy kids crafts.

By now you should have plenty of ideas for how to make the best use of our homeschooling salt dough recipe!

easy salt dough recipe

Where would you like to go now?

Here are some of my most popular homeschooling  pages.  Click on the pic to go to the page.  And - enjoy!

Colorful wind streamers are perfect for celebrating summer crafts for kids. Easy to make, they're ideal for outdoor activities and festivals.
learn how to draw

Our homeschooling salt dough recipe is great for making lots of easy creations and spending a happy afternoon with your kids.

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Homeschooling Easy Crafts › Salt Dough


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