Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Homemade Ornament Gifts with Toddler!

We had Spanish for Preschoolers with just Chiquitita and me today!  It's getting too close for Christmas for most of our friends and today was going to be the last class.

We read "Estrella de Navidad" by Marcus Pfister (the author of Rainbow Fish).  It was beautiful, of course, and the Spanish translation was good, but if you're looking for biblical accuracy this book is not quite on.  The best part about reading toddler's stories is that you can change anything you want in the story.

A few days ago Chiquita and I made salt dough ornaments.  The recipe is from the same book as the first one we tried, but it should be cooked in the oven.  I liked it better, it was easier to work with.

1 cup of salt
2 cups of flour
2 tbsp of vegetable oil
1/2 cup water (I found I needed more water to get the right consistency)

I made the dough and Chiquita helped me roll out the dough and *squish* the cookie cutters to cut out the ornaments (and make a slide for her salt dough "person" to play on).  I used more detailed vintage cookie cutters (that I stole from my mom - sorry Mom!) and skewered a little hole in the top of each for stringing later.  Then I baked them for 2 hours at 250.  They came out nice are hard!

Today we got them out to paint!  Chiquita was enthusiastic so we started with the stars (the easiest to paint) and then covered them in gold glitter.  I had her paint the trees green and the snowmen white and then (after more glitter) I went back and painted in some details.  I'm actually pretty impressed with how they turned out.  Someone with get them for Christmas!

2 comments:

  1. They look gorgeous! I've been meaning to do some salt dough ornaments. My time is running out though, perhaps next Christmas?

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  2. Really cool. I have seen these around and I am excited to try it.

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