At the moment I’m taking care of a mix of older preschoolers and fresh one year old’s. It’s been a fun challenge to find art activities that my 5 year old enjoys as much as my one year old. ”M”- ( almost 2 years old) is obsessed with sprinkles and pouring, but sparkles and colored salt can get expensive in the quantities she loves. So the other day, I was in my kitchen thinking about crafts and I wondered how I could do similar activities for my young ones but without spending tons of money on sparkles. Then I opened my cupboard and saw huge package of salt (thinking play dough) that I had bought at Costco. I grabbed some food coloring and with a few drops we had tons of sprinkles, in lots of color for less than a dollar.
The kids had fun making pictures with the colored salt. But it wasn’t as easy to work with as sand or glitter is on glue. It seemed to clump and fall off when the pictured dried. The next day I had Issac. Issac was more into pouring than sprinkling. So I looked around and found some jars. Issac, Anja, and Cole had a blast making layering the colors. My 11 year old exchange student Annika also couldn’t resist the fun and made a jar of her own. They turned out so well. I can’t wait to see “M” do it. She will probably spend an hour filling up jars with salt if I know her.
