I love creating things, teaching and playing with our two boys. What a blessing it is to be a mom! Our oldest son, Oliver, is 3 years old and he loves to learn. He also loves to do special projects with me, and it’s fun to come up with new ideas for different things to do together. I thought it’d be fun to share a few photos from this salt project! Maybe it will inspire you to try it!
I was looking to make something textural with numbers and letters and I didn’t have any sand. So I improvised and used what I had on hand. Here’s my list of supplies:
salt
food coloring
elmer’s glue
card stock paper
sharpie
Okay, so here we go:
I poured the salt into four different containers, squeezed a few drops of food coloring into each one and THEN reached for some gloves.
Not.
I just reached in and mixed each color with the salts using my hands. Yup, once I was done and had my lovely colored salts, I also had some lovely colored hands. So NEXT time I think I’ll go for some gloves instead of rainbow hands for days. 🙂
I trimmed out some squares of cardstock and drew circles dots (for counting) and letters and numbers. Then I used glue to fill in the shapes of each. Now comes the fun part for me…um, for Oliver. PIck your salt color and pinch out what color you want. Drop the salt over the glue. Make sure you grab a lot (which would equal small fistfuls for little hands) and don’t stop at one color. Once your glue is thoroughly covered with salts, gently tap it into the glue, pick up the card and shake (dump, pour, whatever works) the excess back into the container. Or if you’re three, dump it into all the containers, onto the table and into your lap. Floor too. Don’t forget the floor.
Now set the pretty colored salt card over to the side to dry.
Let it dry overnight. Once they are dry you’ll need to shake off the excess salt again, but you should be left with a nice textured number or letter on the card.
The whole thing was a lot of fun, a big mess, and worth it all for the time with our son! He loved dipping his hands into the salts and mixing it all together. And we’ll use the cards to review counting and letters too!
The only downside to this was that the sharpie ink seemed to bleed once the glue was on it, but really, does it even matter? Perhaps you can find a way to make them without having the bleeding ink. Share if so! Really though, just have fun with your kiddos, don’t be shy about getting in there and getting your hands dirty (or very colorful), grab your camera to document their joy, and remember that the salt is pretty easy to sweep up 😉
(did you see the last picture here?? can you contain the joy?!)
