Christmas Craft Idea for Kids: DIY Salt Dough Tree Ornaments

Have some festive fun with these adorable DIY salt dough tree ornaments!

Making salt dough tree ornaments is a fun way to get ready for the festive season, and can also be a fun way to develop your child’s math skills. (By Reading Eggs content writer and author Sara Leman)

The holiday season is one full of traditions. As soon as the tree makes its annual appearance at home, my daughter starts asking to make salt dough tree ornaments.

Having never been one of those fabulously ‘crafty’ mothers who relish the thought of having paint and glitter smeared all over the house, this is one craft activity that I don’t actually mind. The end results look great and unbelievably, the process is educationally worthwhile!

Nurturing early math skills begins at home (or the kitchen!)

Research has indicated that most babies are born with an innate mathematical ability, and as parents, we often see our role as nurturers and early educators of our young children.

Encouraging our children’s natural instincts for mathematics can be as fun and simple as counting up and down flights of steps, sorting coloured buttons or socks into piles, singing counting songs together, and identifying shapes in the environment. Cooking is also a fun and engaging way to enhance children’s mathematical sense and ability.

Kitchen mathematics encompasses a wide range of mathematical vocabulary and processes, including:

Mathematical vocabulary: more than; less than; half-full; how much more; too much; not enough; bigger than; smaller than; fill; empty; temperature; degrees Fahrenheit; seconds; minutes; hours; liter/pint/cup/quart etc.
Number and counting: one-to-one correspondence; cardinality; adding; subtracting; doubling; halving; fractions
Measurement: weighing ingredients; reading scales; formal measures of mass, volume and capacity; temperature; time
Estimation: about the same; a bit more than; a bit less than
Geometry: identifying different cookie cutter shapes; sorting shapes; recognizing properties of shapes; comparing shapes; spatial awareness; tessellation.

Making salt dough ornaments is a fantastic, festive opportunity to build some mathematics skills while having fun with your child. They are quick and easy to make, with only three simple ingredients. Once they are baked, your child can use their imagination to decorate them. Simply tie on some thread and they are ready to go! They look good on the tree and also make great gifts.

How to make salt dough Christmas tree ornaments

Ingredients

4 cups plain flour
1 cup table salt
1 1/2 cups warm water

Method

Preheat oven to 356°F.
Whisk the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Slowly add the water and stir until it all comes together.
Use your hands to form the mixture into a ball.
Knead until the dough is soft.
Use a large piece of baking/parchment paper as a base and roll the dough until it is about ½ cm or ¼" thick.
Use festive cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.

Encourage your child to minimize waste and to cut shapes economically from the dough. This develops spatial awareness.

Peel away the excess dough and transfer the shapes to a baking sheet.
Use a skewer, straw or toothpick to make a hole in each shape. This is for the ribbon to hang the ornament. (You can also put some texture on the shapes using scissors or a fork.)

Encourage your child to count each shape once they have been cut. This develops one-to-one counting skills and cardinality.

Bake for about 35 minutes, or until hard.
Allow to cool and then get creative with the paints (I prefer to use acrylic paints). Add some glitter and glue for extra sparkle.
Finally tie on some ribbon or thread and your salt dough ornaments are ready to go!

Happy holidays!

For more ways to build your child’s mathematical skills, try Mathseeds online for free. The comprehensive online math program makes learning fun for children aged 3 to 8. It includes interactive games, activities, lessons, and rewards that help children learn early mathematical skills and concepts.

You can sign up for your free trial of Mathseeds and Reading Eggs here.