Things to do with salt and kids

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Today we have the next instalment in our 'Things to do with' series where we take a common item and see what ways we can play with it, this time it's salt.  Just your regular table salt hopefully in your cupboard already and waiting for some play opportunities!

1 - Salt Scoop and Pour

I coloured some salt with food colouring by placing them together in a plastic sandwich bag and giving it all a good shake.  Then I set up a few pots and spoons for Champ to play with.

He enjoyed scooping out the salt and pouring it in to various pots then pouring it all out again.  It always amazes me how long this type of play can keep him entertained.

But, perhaps next time I should use a bit less food colouring - he had blue stained hands for two days, whoops!

2 - Salt Writing

Once he was bored with pouring and scooping we poured all the salt into the tray and he used a chopstick to make marks, write his name and draw pictures.

3 - Salt Painting

I wrote about our salt painting recently, you can check out how we made our salt pictures here.  It was a fun activity and the results were pretty and our first attempt with watercolours.

4 - Salt & Ice Sensory Play

I enjoyed watching all three boys engage with this sensory play.  I'd frozen some water coloured with food colouring in various pots and put them on the tray then I gave the boys some salt to watch the ice melt.  We'd done this once before, but last time I'd 'trapped' plastic bugs inside for them to free.

The ice was soon melted and the boys enjoyed creating holes in the ice blocks.

5 - Homemade Puffy Paint

We made this puffy paint a while ago and the two ingredients are salt and self raising flour.  It makes for quite a different type of painting as it raises up after cooking in the microwave.

6 - Salt Dough

Salt dough is like play dough except that you can dry it out, paint it and make ornaments etc out of it.  We've made salt dough before (like when we made crosses for Easter), normally we air dry it, but this time we followed Rainy Day Mum's recipe and dried it out in the microwave, much, much quicker, but with slight air bubbles - great for kids as they're ready straight away, but I'd air dry it if we were making presents.

Here's our hearts and dinosaurs all ready for painting.

I found lots more salt play ideas pinned on my Salt Pinterest Board, but I'd love to hear your salt play ideas.

If you're looking for more 'Things to do with' ideas you can check out Things to do with foil, plastic bags, wrapping paper, spaghetti, pumpkin, pinecones, acorns, odd socks, chestnuts and carrots.