Fun with food

This week we did some crafts that involved food. We made and played with gelatin play-dough, gelatin paint, juice powder paint (if you are going to do this use a very flavourful juice- we did it with the crystal light packages and it didn't work that well. They smelt good, but it wasn't colourful!).

Yesterday we made salt dough. We mixed 2 cups of flour with 1 cup of table salt and 1 cup of cold water. I forgot to take pictures, but we rolled it out and used the letter cookie cutters to do each of the kids first initial. Then the older kids also got to play with it. In the end, they did their hand prints on their pieces. The younger ones had smaller pieces to play with, and theirs ended up half in their mouths- GROSS- and in tiny bits on the floor!


After they did their hand prints, I put those with the letters in the oven. It was on 200 for a LONG time! Like hours! Finally about 5 hours later (I am thinking maybe I could have turned the oven up, but the recipe I had said 200- I think that is for the thinner ornaments (you can use this to make Christmas ornaments too). Anyways--- we eventually took them out (after flipping them too), and decided we would paint them today. You can also just leave them out in the room for a couple of days- flipping regularly too. Or, if you don't use it all, store it in a sealed container for a couple days.

Today, we painted them. I used acrylic paints with the kids for this. And you can also glaze over it if you wanted too.


The kids had so much fun painting something that they made from start to finish.






Now they can give their parents the hand prints, and we are going to add some ribbon to the letters so they can hang them in their rooms (or where ever!).
REMEMBER- if you want to hang what ever you make with the salt dough- you have to put the holes in them when they are still doughy- before drying or baking!

This is their finished product before putting the ribbon in them (they are still drying!