Crafts with kids: Salt-dough ornaments.

Since we left our Christmas decor at home, we've been having fun making things this year.  My kids are finally old enough to enjoy making a (quick) craft.  Yesterday, we tried our hand at making ornaments out of salt-dough.

You may have made these as a child, or made them with your kids already, but I never had.  So for all of you salt-dough newbies, here's the how to:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.  Mix together 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup warm water and 1 cup flour.  Mix well. 

E helped me with this part (I can't say it all stayed in the bowl). 

Roll the dough out and use cookie cutters to make shapes.  Transfer shapes to a cookie sheet. 

We used a few sets of cookie cutters from ikea (animals + random Christmas shapes).  This part was harder for E, but she had fun trying to roll the dough out flat.  The only way our shapes even turned out looking like animals, was because I'm a control freak.  I let her cut the shapes out, but I did the transferring.  I found I had to use lots and lots of flour on the work surface to keep the dough from sticking.

Poke holes in ornaments where you want them to hang.  I used the bottom of a colored pencil for this (classy).  Put ornaments in preheated oven for up to two hours, or until they feel completely hard. 

Once ornaments have cooked and cooled, let the kids go to town on them with acrylic paints.  I was really surprised at A's concentration.  I don't think E ever sat still for that long before age 2!

When the girls were done, I tied twine to the ornaments and then tied them to a ribbon strung on their shelf.

They're so proud of the "Christmas" they made!

P.S. I got my recipe for salt dough from here (but cut it in half)