Toddler Holiday Craft: Salt Dough Ornaments

Stewart plaid shirt | velvet pants | velvet mules – sold out, similar | earrings

I love doing sensory activities with Wyatt. As a 14 month old, he is constantly exploring and this holiday activity lets him do that safely…and we get some homemade ornaments out of it! What I love about making salt dough ornaments is that you already have everything you need in your kitchen, and it’s super easy. All of the ingredients are food items so even if Wyatt decides to taste the salty dough, that’s totally okay. (And of course he did, he made a yucky face, but definitely tried licking it a few more times before we cleaned up…just incase it got tastier.) I remember making ornaments like this as a kid, and my parents definitely still have a few!

We made one batch and did some ornaments with the standard salt dough recipe, then added some cinnamon for some bonus sensory smell. I didn’t add a ton, just kind of swirled it in so my ornaments still looked white, with a cinnamon swirl. I also tried baking half of our ornaments and leaving the other half out for 24 hours. They both hardened up nicely, so pick your poison!

Salt Dough Ornaments

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup warm water
Optional: Cinnamon

Other Supplies:
Cookie Cutters (holiday or any shape)
Wax Paper
Rolling Pin (or wine bottle if you don’t have one)
Ribbon, string, twine, anything for the ornament to hang off of
Screwdriver or pen tip- something small to poke the hole
Optional: Acrylic Paint

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. (Or you can leave them out for 24 hours instead of baking)
In a bowl, mix flour, salt and water.
Knead the dough until it’s not sticky or crumbly. Dust your hands with flour if necessary. This is a great time for baby to get involved, let them squish, smell, and even taste (it’s all food!) If you want to add in cinnamon to make them smell delicious, sprinkle it in to your desired amount.
Roll the dough out on wax paper.
Use your cookie cutters to cut out festive shapes! You can also do an imprint of your little one’s hand like in this example. We stuck with shapes to fit the style of our tree decor!
Poke a small hole in the top of each ornament for the string to hang.
Bake on a cookie sheet for 1 hour OR leave to dry for 24 hours or until totally hardened.
String ornaments + hang on your tree!
Optional: Your little one can paint the ornaments with acrylic paint once the ornaments are dry if they’re old enough!