Easter Salt Dough Craft
This Easter Salt Dough craft is one of our favorites. It feels fun, and cheerful for spring and new beginnings. Christmas has so many fun activities, but it seems like Easter gets overlooked. I want to set up traditions not just around one holiday, but several holidays that are particularly meaningful. One of my favorite books on this topic was Sally Clarkson’s “Life-giving Home”. In that book, every holiday had meaningful traditions every month of the year. These traditions and celebrations united them as a family and grounded them in their faith!
The death and resurrection of Christ is the hinge on which our faith hangs. It is something I want us to rejoice and celebrate in, not just at church, but in our home. There are so many beautiful spring things. New life and resurrection are connected to one another.
One of the things I’ve done is try to make crafts and traditions that are similar to Christmas, but centered around Easter. The Resurrection Garden is one of those, we also do Resurrection Eggs, and this year I’m figuring out special Easter books to read with the kids using the book tournament concept.
This set that I shared, is an egg set that I did when Keaton was really little. We reused it many years, but this year I want to let the boys make some. We may do flowers or crosses this year. The set I made are in the shape of eggs because it’s the shape of the cookie cutter I had!
Older kids can make this project harder by painting specific patterns. Younger kids can paint solid or splash with a tie-dye look. If you have a toddler that you are concerned will eat the paint squirt some onto the ornament and place it into a plastic bag. They can spread it around with their finger through the plastic. I have visual directions for that method HERE.
Alternative Ideas for the Easter Salt Dough Craft
If you don’t want to make the ornaments out of salt dough I have found that Dollar Tree has some similar kinds of ornaments out of wood. They usually have them for every season. I almost always pick up a pack of leaves at Thanksgiving.
You could also do paper ornaments like a valentine’s day tree. Cut out the shape that you want out of construction paper, card stock, or scrapbook paper. The you can draw on them, paint, or write little verses!
Helpful Hints
I used to give my kids the full pack of paints and the project. But every time it ended up a muddy brown color because they mixed all the colors together. Then one year I gave them a couple of colors at a time and allowed them to layer the project drying between colors. I made the project last a little longer and feel more special because they took their time with it. Ever since then, I’ve done projects like this that way!
