Teddy Bears Picnic - Air dry Salt Dough Food

Make a delicious picnic for your Teddy Bears with air dry salt dough.

Air dry salt dough is an easy to make, inexpensive, modeling material. Using just flour, salt and water, your kids can get creative making their own modeling dough and sculpting it into their own role-play toys, models and decorations.

• Salt dough can be used as an alternative to play-dough. It can be kept for re-use for a few days if it is stored in an airtight container.
  Or
• Models can be left to air dry for a few days and then painted.

Remember: Salt dough is a modeling material, it is not edible.

Air dry Salt Dough Recipe

What you need:

2 cups plain or all-purpose flour 1 cup table salt 1 cup cold water Extra flour for rolling out the dough

What to do:

1. Put the salt and flour in a large bowl and mix them together.

2. Slowly pour the water, a little at a time, into the flour and water mixture. Stir the mixture until it comes together in a ball. (You might not need all of the water.)

3. Place the dough on a floured work surface and kneed for about five minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

4. Divide the dough up into smaller pieces. Then either roll out the dough with a rolling pin and cut it into shapes (you could use biscuit cutters to do this) or shape and model the dough with your hands.

Top Tips:

• The thicker your model or rolled out dough, the longer it will take to air dry. - If you want to make hanging ornaments, make a hole in the dough while it is still wet with a cocktail stick. You may need to re-pierce the hole a few times while the dough is air drying.

• Unused dough can be stored in an air tight container for a few days.

5. Place the dough shapes on parchment paper to air dry for 3 or 4 days. Turn the shapes over twice a day to speed up the drying process.

6. When the dough shapes are completely dry, decorate with tempera paint.

Top Tip:

• Mixing white glue with the paint helps to seal and glaze decorated dough.

  Print a copy of the salt dough recipe here.

Activity develops:

Fine motor skills and Hand-eye co-ordination:

• Pinching, rolling, cutting and manipulating the dough help to strengthen finger and hand muscles and develop hand-eye co-ordination.

Language skills:

• Making salt dough provides an opportunity for developing listening and instruction following skills. Vocabulary can also be developed as you introduce and use words like twist, roll, bend, pinch, squash.

Science exploration:

• As your child manipulates the dough, they will begin to discover that they can change the shape of some materials by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching etc.
• Encourage your child to talk about the actions they use as they work with the dough e.g. twist, stretch.
• Can they describe the actions they use to change the shape of the dough as a push or a pull? e.g. "I made a snake. I stretched the dough, stretching is a pull." "I made a pancake by squeezing the dough between my hands. Squeezing is a push."

Creativity