Among lovers of needlework, salt dough has long been successfully used as a material for creating flat and three-dimensional sculptures. In general, modeling is traditionally loved, probably, by all children from a very young age, and many creatively oriented adults are not averse to working with plasticine. However, plasticine, for a number of reasons, is not always suitable for children, and for babies who can swallow it, it is generally undesirable, unless under the supervision of adults, which does not always work out. But salt dough is a wonderful, affordable and practically harmless material. In addition, it has a number of features, it is interesting to work with it, so modeling from salt dough occupies a separate place among popular hobbies.
Let's make salt dough
A tempting and indisputable advantage of this material is its availability: the dough is prepared on its own, in the right amount, and all the few ingredients are available in almost any kitchen - in extreme cases, you can run to the nearest grocery store, while you don’t have to spend a lot of money.
Salt dough recipe for crafts
Mix 200 grams of table salt with 2 cups of wheat flour and 2 tablespoons of starch, add about ¾ cup of water and a tablespoon of sunflower oil. Mix it all up well. Proper modeling dough does not crumble and does not stick to your hands, it accepts and holds the shape given to it well. In the process of preparing the dough, its structure can be adjusted by adding (small portions) water or flour, depending on whether the dough is too thick or watery.
Starch, by the way, is not a mandatory component - it is more needed to create voluminous relief figures, although many people add it all the time, regardless of what they are going to sculpt.
After the dough is cooked and molded well, put it in a plastic bag and place it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
Drying of finished products
In order to securely fix the shape of the resulting salt dough crafts, it must be dried. After drying, your product, unlike plasticine, will look like new for many years. 
So how do you dry the craft? Yes, everything is very simple: you can leave it in the same place where it was sculpted and dry it for a while (no one will say how much - it all depends on such factors as the temperature and humidity of the air in the room, the humidity of the dough itself, etc.) in a natural environment. However, we recommend baking finished crafts in the oven - in this way, in some way, there is an analogue of firing clay products in an oven, however, under much more gentle conditions: place the craft in a cold oven and set the temperature to about 50 ° C, leave for half an hour, then increase the temperature up to 100 ° C and dry for another hour and a half. Such phasing is necessary so that the dough does not crack, but bakes gradually and reliably.
Finished product painting
The dried and cooled craft should sand with fine sandpaper, straightening the regular roughness, then color according to the creative plan. Acrylic paints (with an acrylic base) are best suited for their rich color, fast drying and other advantages. However, salt dough is good because ordinary inexpensive gouaches or watercolors will also do an excellent job - indeed, one of the most accessible types of creativity! 
Another interesting option is to color the dough itself before sculpting, if during the kneading process add a little food coloring to it (cocoa powder, by the way, also colors the dough beautifully) or acrylic paint: continue kneading, achieving uniform coloring of the entire mass. 
The last step in making the craft is to cover its already painted surface with a glossy or matte (at your discretion) water-based varnish. Now the figure created by your hands or the hands of your child can take its rightful place as an interior decoration, New Year's decoration, toy, and also serve as an excellent gift. Success in creative work!
Our distant ancestors decorated the surface of loaves with figured images of spikelets, berries, leaves before baking to attract good luck and receive blessings from their deities. Today we do it without any religious background, just for beauty.
In addition to decorating edible products, the use of dough of a special composition allows you to create very spectacular and beautiful decorative figurines, pictures and flowers. In this case, the dough perfectly replaces more complex and expensive materials, so it is ideal for young children. But this is such an exciting activity that even adult respectable people are happy to do it.
Everyone can use salt dough for self-expression and relaxation, it is only important to know how to make a durable and plastic material, as well as competently dry and color the finished product.
The subtleties of making dough for crafts
The modeling of products itself is no different from working with plasticine or other similar materials. The advantage of salt dough is that it is more plastic, less dirty hands and surrounding objects, gives more opportunities for complex work, and also perfectly preserved after proper drying, becoming hard and durable.
- The difficulty lies in how to prepare the right dough that will not stick to hands and tools, will not crack and crumble. To do this, follow a few simple tips:
- Do not take pancake flour for work - it is more sticky and the dough will turn out to be of poor consistency.
- Use only fine "Extra" type salt. Coarse salt will create a coarse crumbly dough due to grains when kneaded directly dry, and dissolving such salt in water will take too long. In addition, there may be impurities in rock salt that will stain the modeling dough, and Extra salt is purified and very fine.
By diluting the flour with ice water, you can get an excellent, plastic and very homogeneous dough.
Using these simple tips, you can start working with your children, creating a variety of products of amazing beauty. Salt dough is a simple, inexpensive and very accessible material for creativity, and children are just crazy about such useful entertainment.
Used tools and materials
When we sculpt from salt dough, we need special tools to work. They are all found in our homes, in our kitchens, or among stationery, sewing and craft supplies.
Basic tools and materials for work:
- Rolling pin for rolling dough. If it is not there or the existing one is too large for children's hands, you can find a replacement in the form of an ordinary glass bottle.
- Knife for cutting dough. Children can be given a plastic knife from a set of colored plasticine.
- Board for rolling dough and making products.
- Paints for coloring (watercolor, acrylic, gouache - any water-soluble dyes).
- Varnishes for finishing (water-based, best in aerosols). Additionally, you can use spray varnishes "with special effects" - "snow", with sparkles, gold, silver or other metallic varnish.
- A set of brushes for coloring.
- Water container.
- Forms for cookies.
- A variety of items to add texture to the finished product - toothbrushes, combs, knitting needles, buttons, lace and more.
For small children, special clothing should be provided, as they can get very dirty. Stock up on a pack of dry and wet wipes before work - they are convenient not only to clean your hands, but also to get your brushes wet from excess paint. So it will be possible to avoid the spreading of dyes over the finished little thing.
Three best recipes
To knead salty dough, you can use your own hands or entrust this process to modern technology - a mixer or dough mixer. With their help, you can get a particularly smooth and elastic dough.
In order for the finished product not to crumble, you need to pre-fill the salt with the required volume of water, and then mix it thoroughly with flour. It is important to mix the product well until completely homogeneous, otherwise the finished item may crack or break into separate pieces during drying.
Basic Recipe:
- A glass of flour (wheat or rye).
- A glass of finely ground salt of the "Extra" type.
- Half a glass of ice water.
Mix the ingredients and knead the dough until smooth. This recipe is great for crafts with fine details such as flowers, leaves, ornamental plants, and so on.
Plastic soft dough recipe:
- Flour - one glass.
- Fine salt - one glass.
- The water is very cold - half a glass.
- Vegetable oil - 2 tablespoons.
Instead of oil, you can take glycerin, a fairly fatty cream or cooking oil. The introduction of fats or oils into the salt dough recipe makes it more plastic and elastic, and also avoids cracking of the product after drying. This option is especially suitable for "thick-walled" products, which can break if the dough is completely dry.
For work with fine details or many small elements, you will need to use an improved salt dough recipe:
- 1.5 cups flour.
- 1 glass of salt.
- 0.5 cups of water.
- 2 - 3 tablespoons of PVA glue, wallpaper glue like "Metilan" or any other water-soluble glue.
Such dough keeps its shape perfectly, small thin elements can be made from it, and with definitely “stuffed” hands, you can make things that are outwardly indistinguishable from good porcelain.
Any recipe for salt dough can be regarded as a basis, since you can modify it “for yourself” endlessly, experimenting with various ingredients until you get the right composition.
How to Dry Salt Dough Perfectly
The main difficulty for beginners is the technology of drying the finished product. Drying can be done in different ways:
- "Bake" in a heated oven like regular cookies, at a temperature ranging from 50 to 80 degrees (depending on the size and thickness of the product). The finished little thing is placed on parchment paper for baking and placed in a preheated oven for about an hour. The duration of processing depends on the dimensions of the product. Do not remove the item from the oven until the oven has completely cooled down.
- Drying in a cold oven, that is, the product is placed in a cold oven, the heat is turned on and brought to the desired temperature. Everything else is exactly the same as in the previous paragraph.
- Salt dough products are best simply air dried, although this takes a long time. A well-dried craft becomes durable, hard and not subject to external influence. Normal drying is great for small or delicate items.
Do not use electrical appliances or a central heating battery for drying. They dry the dough unevenly, which can cause cracking or damage to the thing if it has dried on only one side, has a dry surface and “raw insides”.
Used dyes and finishing materials
When preparing salt dough, the dye can be injected directly into the product itself and get a material very similar to plasticine. But the difficulty in this case will be working with the material - you will have to connect individual colored parts, and for kids it's too difficult. Everyone loves to work with paints, so for children it is preferable to use the schedule of a ready-made monophonic little thing.
In work, it is easiest to use water-soluble paints. Acrylic dyes are very good - they give a dense and uniform color, have a large color palette and are easy to use, dry quickly. But you can also use regular watercolor. It gives a beautiful translucent layer, and paints can be layered with glazes to obtain special effects - volume, transition of tones, overflows and acquiring different textures. If there is a need to obtain an opaque staining with watercolors, you can use a white primer. Its role can be played by white acrylic paint, gouache or tempera with the addition of PVA glue to hold it on the surface of the product.
For decoration, you can use bulk paints, metallic dyes, beads of different sizes and shapes, buttons, rhinestones and other little things that do not deteriorate from high temperatures if drying in the oven is planned.
Is it worth varnishing crafts?
In principle, the finished salt dough craft holds paint very well, but if you plan to use this thing, for example, for games, or it is a chess piece, a decorative vase, a box, in a word, a thing that will suffer from constant touching, then it should be covered varnish. It will not only protect finished products from external influences, but also give a beautiful glossy sheen, which is necessary for many types of crafts.
The easiest way to use varnish in aerosols, carrying out processing in the open air or in a well-ventilated area. If necessary, varnishing can be repeated several times, drying each previous layer well. To give a special decorative effect, you can use special sprays, for example, with the effect of snow or sparkles.
Salt dough types
For toddlers or beginners, you need to use simpler forms and objects that they understand. You can start sculpting with traditional cats or dogs, fruits and berries, cars and other simple figures without numerous and complex details. Gradually, with an increase in the level of skill and the young sculptors themselves, the work can be complicated, moving on to the creation of figures, paintings and compositions.
The pinnacle of craftsmanship can be considered the creation of flowers from bioceramics, as salt dough is also called. Of course, even a baby can make a simple chamomile, but only an “advanced” user can make a full-fledged bouquet of roses or a flowering jasmine branch.
To learn how to work with salt dough, you need to follow the instructions step by step and do not rush to take on complex products.
A variety of panels and paintings from dough with salt
Creating pictures from dough is not as difficult as it seems. At the first stages of creativity, it is worth using a hint in the form of a photograph of the future “work of art”. For example, you want to create a beautiful autumn landscape. Find a beautiful photo with a few small details and use it as inspiration.
- A piece of thin plywood is suitable as the basis for the picture, but if it is not available, you can also use thick cardboard. A rolled out layer of dough is superimposed on the surface of the base. It can be glued with any suitable glue.
- All the details of the future picture are cut out or fashioned from salt dough and superimposed on each other as they move away from the background of the picture. That is, the objects farthest from the viewer will be laid out on the base first. This method will allow you to get very neat and expressive volumetric images.
- The finished picture is thoroughly dried, and then painted with suitable paints. After the paints have dried, the picture is varnished and placed in a frame. The product is ready, it can be hung on the wall in the room or given to someone who can appreciate the creativity and talent of the performer.
If you use foil as the basis for the product, the dried and painted part can be easily removed from it and then transferred to any other material. It can be a dense fabric stretched over a frame, glass, plastic, even metal. Such flat and at the same time voluminous products can be used to decorate boxes, decorate children's furniture, boxes with various things, or be used to identify, for example, lockers for things in a kindergarten locker room.
Figurines and dolls made of bioceramics
For kids, there is nothing more interesting than sculpting "little men". They really like "cartoon" characters, for example, fixies, Masha from a cartoon about a bear, heroes of comics and fairy tales. From salt dough, you can make not only figurines and dolls, but also various houses, benches, trees, fountains - in a word, everything that fantasy can suggest.
If you plan to make fairly large figures, you should take care of the internal frame and stands for stable standing. Desulphurized matches, plastic and wooden toothpicks can be used as a support for small plastics, cocktail skewers or Asian chopsticks may be required for larger items. Save wooden ice cream sticks - they can be the basis of many different products.
For stability, the figures must be placed on a salt dough base in the shape of a circle or oval - this will ensure a flat plane.
If the figure is depicted in motion, it may be necessary to create a wire frame - it will help in modeling and will not allow the finished product to crumble.
In addition to voluminous, three-dimensional figures of people and animals, various fruits or vegetables can be created from salt dough. They are beautiful both on their own and as part of various compositions. For example, elegant fruits can be effectively laid out on a beautiful dish and decorate the kitchen or dining room with them.
Flat figures can be cut out with cookie cutters. Hearts can become original valentines, Christmas trees can decorate the New Year's table, flowers can be used to mark places when seating guests at a holiday. Only fantasy can limit the scope of various dough products.
Spectacular flowers and plants from flour salt
The pinnacle of craftsmanship is thin and graceful flowers made from flour salt, as salt dough is also called. This work requires great perseverance, talent and accuracy, so it is more suitable for adults and teenagers. Toddlers, on the other hand, can successfully sculpt stylized flowers of a simple shape.
How to mold a complex three-dimensional flower, for example, a rose?
- You need to take a piece of dough and roll the core out of it in the form of a drop. The base of the drop is the bottom of the flower.
- Then you need to thinly roll out the dough and cut out rose petals of different sizes and shapes from it.
- By carefully placing one petal after another on a teardrop-shaped base, you can get a rose blank. To make it look like a real flower, each petal must be carefully bent, giving it a natural shape and shape.
- To complete the work, you need to create a cup of a flower with folded sepals, cut out some beautiful leaves with carved edges and connect all the details together with wire and pieces of salt dough.
- Finished crafts are left to dry completely, and then painted in the selected colors.
By this principle, you can create any flowers, whole bouquets, complex compositions and even imitations of plants in pots. The choice of plot depends on the imagination and creativity of the creator. A good example would be a cute cactus that is supposed to be kept near the computer. A living plant, even one as stable as a cactus, may not survive in an office environment, but a lovely prickly creature made of salt dough will survive any cataclysms perfectly.
How to deal with possible problems
In any work, errors may occur, or things may not go at all as expected. Even if you do everything in stages, taking into account all the nuances, product defects may appear. Basically, these are cracking and chipping of individual parts of the product.
Cracks in crafts appear due to the wrong composition of the dough, errors in drying, or the beginning of coloring the finished item when the base is not completely dry. If the cracks are small or the surface of the product is covered with a thin network of small cracks, they can be repaired.
To do this, you need to dry the thing completely, and then carefully sand the defects with sandpaper of varying degrees of abrasiveness. You can bring the surface to the ideal with “velvet” sandpaper. Then the surviving cracks can be puttied with a dough slightly diluted with water and salt. You may have to repeat the procedure several times if the cracks are very deep.
The lesson learned will teach that much more attention should be paid to the basis of the future thing than even to the finish - not only the appearance of the product itself, but also the very fact of its existence depends on its quality.
It happens that during the drying process, part of the product simply disappears, especially often this happens with thin parts or fragile small fragments. Sometimes the elements of the work break off during the schedule with too much exposure. In order to repair a toy with an even break line, you can use ordinary PVA glue. Apply layers of glue carefully so that ugly streaks do not form. The finished and dried item must be sanded and re-painted and varnished.
If a product made from fresh dough has broken, it is enough to moisten the fracture points with water, press the individual parts against each other and wait for setting. Decorate the dried work as planned.
You can try to restore a damaged figurine with the loss of individual elements by replacing the missing parts with pieces of fresh dough. Dry and fresh elements may not bond securely, so after the new parts dry, they may need to be glued together for strength.
Give yourself and your children the pleasure of creativity, because working with dough is easy and pleasant, and the cost of materials is negligible. The result of the work can exceed any expectations!
Having become a mass phenomenon relatively recently, store-bought salt dough quickly occupied a niche that plasticine could not previously occupy because of its too high density, namely modeling with the youngest children.
Today, such a product is considered almost an indispensable element in the development of any child, but although it looks like ordinary plasticine, there are still a number of differences that should be taken into account.
What is this?
It should be noted that salt dough is often called a kind of plasticine, but this is fundamentally wrong. Although the purpose is approximately the same, both the composition and properties of the two mixtures are very different.
Let's start with the composition. In fact, when even plasticine was not yet a truly mass phenomenon, mothers sometimes replaced it with ordinary dough, which, in principle, is also suitable for modeling, but at the same time it is safe because of its natural origin. Store-bought salt dough this is a product that lives up to its name, that is, there really are components characteristic of the raw materials of future baking.
Of course, the composition may differ from manufacturer to manufacturer - softeners, plasticizers, dyes are added there, but all this must be harmless so that the child can even try it without harm.
However, the mixture is not made for this, so manufacturers mercilessly salt it, which forces the kids not to consider the mass as food.
Since the materials for the production of dough and plasticine are radically different, it would be strange to expect the same properties from them. First of all, it is worth noting that the dough is much softer: it never requires a preliminary warm-up, you can sculpt from it literally immediately and without much effort, which is an additional important plus for children under the age of 3-4 years.
The same quality is also very useful in a situation where, for some reason, a child still pulls the mixture into his mouth, which kids are very prone to - plasticine, even ecological, will get lumpy in the throat, but the dough will be completely swallowed.
Although products made from most types of plasticine cannot be called durable, the dough is even less durable. Due to the fact that the mass does not harden like plasticine, it generally does not hold a complex shape so well. True, it is able to dry out, but even then it is not a model of strength and hardness, as it begins to crumble a little. By the way, unlike plasticine, it is impossible to restore a completely dried dough, and for cheap dough samples, restoration is not possible even when it has dried at least from above.
Because of this, modeling dough has to be stored in an airtight container, but at the same time it is quite possible not to buy it, but to make it yourself in any quantity necessary for the child, and quite inexpensively.
What is needed?
Modeling from dough is somewhat reminiscent of modeling from plasticine, but they are more simplified, a kind of preparatory stage for it. Toddlers perceive the mixture as another device for playing, but working with such material helps to fulfill important goals and tasks - it is very useful. for the development of fine motor skills of hands, because in the future it will allow the child to master any complex and precise manipulations much faster.
Modeling also contributes to the development of hand muscles - it turns out that a child who has been modeling from dough from the age of a year and a half has much more developed hands than a baby who started immediately with plasticine at 3-4 years old.
If at a very early age the baby rather abstractly kneads the dough, then as he grows, he begins to put a certain creative component into the process. Firstly, he learns to give the mass the desired shape, which in the future will help him in the manufacture of any things with his own hands. Secondly, such exercises are very conducive to the development of fantasy - as the task becomes more complicated, the child begins to think through different possible ways to solve it.
Making a figurine from several pieces, he begins to better understand the concepts of a particular and a composite whole. Thinking of this kind from a very early age can develop the intellect to such an extent that in the future a grown up kid will be able to solve similar problems at a completely different level - for example, to design complex engineering structures and mechanisms.
In recent years, the benefits of using salt dough for the overall development of the child have been officially recognized even by leading experts in the education of children. Today, this material is widely used in children's institutions, and in bookstores you can even find specialized manuals for working with dough. One of these books was published I. A. Lychagin. The publication was published in 2017 under the title "Modeling from salt dough with children 3-4 years old."
The author tries to show ways to really interest the child by teaching him how to make really beautiful figurines with his own hands, and recommends his work for both group classes and for home use.
Types and composition
Although the dough seems to be a completely simple material with no special variety of ingredients, today it is made from quite different materials. In addition to the classic variants of flour (usually rye) and salt, a variety with a large addition of starch is also popular.
Using different ingredients in different proportions allows you to vary the density of the mixture and the ease of working with it, creating loose, but very soft types of dough for very tiny children and more elastic, but with more creative potential for those who are a little older. Some manufacturers also call their clay products modeling dough, but this is fundamentally wrong, since the consumer is already used to eating such a mixture, while clay is unlikely to benefit the baby.
Modeling dough is also sold in completely different concepts. There are multi-colored kits, the idea of which is close to that used in plasticine kits. For young children, colored dough is much more often produced, which is not sold in sets, but by the piece - parents simply choose the desired color. Such a product is not designed for complex crafts, but rather to simply interest the baby in the process.
Finally, occasionally there are colorless (conditionally white) types of dough - it is designed for the parents themselves or a small creator to mix the dye, although the possibility of subsequent coloring of an already dried product is also allowed. Modeling dough can be decorated not only with dyes, but also with other ingredients, such as sequins, sparkles, and so on, but this material should not be given to children under the age of three because such decorations are not edible.
In addition, modeling dough varies in quality and concept. For example, in our country, mixtures under the Plastishka brand are very popular, but although they are not bad, they mainly attract consumers with their low price.
At the other extreme are sets play doh, known all over the world - they are expensive, but they are 100% safe for the baby, good quality, as well as a complete set of additional tools for modeling and playing, detailed instructions for creating figures, and so on.
Actually, you can delve into the topic in more detail by studying the Youtube channel known as Miss Katy (Miss Katy).
The channel has already collected more than five million subscribers - in the videos it shoots, a little girl Katya, together with her dad, tries to sculpt various figures from salt dough. Of course, masterpieces (really masterful) are created mainly by dad with very little help from his daughter, but the presenters very clearly show the features of modeling from a huge number of sets from different manufacturers.
You can watch one of the videos from the Miss Katy channel below.
How to use?
There are no specific rules for modeling from salt dough, only a general technology has been developed on how to teach a child to create something similar to his idea. Training should be done in stages. At the earliest stages, it is enough to let the child knead the dough - even such an exercise will develop the motor skills of the hands. Next, you need to show the child simple techniques for working with mass - teach him to roll balls and sausages.
Here it is very important to work actively with the child, because without the help of parents, he will most likely stop on balls and sausages. At first, the parents do the main work, their task is to show that masterpieces can be created from dough.
At the same time, you can’t remove the little one from the process - on the contrary, you need to involve him by asking him to do some simple small details.
If a complete set of dough and tools for working with it was bought, there may be templates for complex details inside - then even the child himself can make them.
It should be noted that some manufacturers make the dough unsalted, emphasizing that modeling material and food are not always different things. After all, a dough figurine will not replace a full-fledged toy, as it is short-lived and too soft - so why not eat it? If the mass is made in this way, the packaging should describe the technology for bringing the made figure to a state of readiness for eating without losing its appearance.
What can be blinded?
Although, in general, salt dough holds its shape much worse than plasticine, products made from some of its denser types are quite capable of holding a shape that does not involve too complex and delicate details. If plasticine is made from dough at home, then to achieve the desired result, the mixture should turn out to be drier - contain less water and more flour, salt and starch.
However, many parents are at a loss before the question of what kind of figures can be made from this material, so let's look at the most common creative ideas, which are not so few.
Probably the most favorite topic for children when creating products from dough and plasticine is animals. The most popular are the ubiquitous friends of man - dogs and cats, but other options are possible - in particular, in rural areas, children like to make figures of a chicken or a calf. Of the other representatives of the animal world, butterflies, fish, and a dolphin are in demand.
The flora, of course, also has the right to be represented in children's creativity, although girls are more likely to turn to it - they are very fond of sculpting flowers, as well as fruits and vegetables with their own hands. Here we smoothly move on to the topic of food, since modeling pies and buns is also interesting for girls - for such purposes, by the way, it is very practical to use dough that does not contain salt.
Toys are another source of inspiration for children - they may want to sculpt their favorite car or bear.
With the right approach, a child can create a whole composition with his own hands, for example, depict how cats play with a ball of thread. An excellent, very warm craft will be a stucco basket with the same fruits and vegetables. However, a complex composite craft of many parts is not necessarily created in three dimensions - small talents can create pictures from dough on a flat surface. You can, for example, depict autumn, when the sun illuminates trees with yellow and orange crowns.
With the further development of their own skills, children are able to create more complex things - for example, a candlestick. Who said that an origami bird should only be made out of paper? It can also be molded from dough! Well, key rings made from such a mass cannot be used for their intended purpose, but the child will understand the general principle, and then be able to repeat his masterpiece from a more durable material.
Master class for beginners
In order to interest a child, you can’t set him tasks that he definitely won’t be able to complete; at the same time, it is very important that he immediately see that he is not making abstract sausages, but something more interesting. You need to teach your baby to sculpt step by step, and if parents decide to try to do it on their own, but do not have enough information about how to solve the problem, they will be helped by a pedbox - a collection of ideas for finished products from the same dough, each of which is given a description of manufacturing methods and techniques.
Of course, teaching a girl is much easier, because the mother usually does the training, and the girl herself is largely interested in what an ordinary woman does in everyday life.
To begin with, you can interest her in the joint creation of a significant dish, during which the baby will be assigned an exclusively creative role, albeit under the control of her mother. For example, we ask the girl to roll sausages from the usual dough and decorate the loaf with them, or even let the baby do it herself under supervision.
The child will certainly be proud that real food was made with his participation, which everyone eats, and may be interested in both modeling and cooking, although at such an early age it is worth limiting to one modeling for now. However, the girl's "kitchen" inclinations can also be used to develop creative abilities - for example, modeling toy pies and buns develops the same motor skills. In the future, you can use any new interesting ideas.
If a child, for certain reasons, is completely uninterested in the kitchen theme, or if he has already passed this stage, it is worth taking on a more complex project - creating a toy in the form of a person. Modeling a doll from colored dough in practice, it turns out to be much simpler than it might seem at first glance, but the help of adults is still necessary for the baby, at least at first.
In fact, the doll is made from circles and ovals of different colors - it is necessary to make limbs, torso, head, eyes and nose will also be separate parts. The planning of the future sculpture and its assembly for the first time is carried out exclusively by adults, and the child himself, by order of the "leader", makes the details themselves and at the same time observes how to assemble a single whole from them.
How to make a ballerina with your own hands from salt dough, see the next video.
Methodical development
It is possible to approach the solution of the problem of teaching children to sculpt even at home with all seriousness. To do this, an educational program developed by professional educators for use in kindergarten or other childcare facilities can be used and performed in accordance with the Federal State Educational Standard. Those are freely available for parents who want to additionally engage with the kids on their own, they can be printed, and an open lesson, which is regularly held in most kindergartens, will help to see the basic principles of educational interaction with the child.
At the same time, parents in some cases can create such programs themselves for their own use.
Any ready-made program should be taken as a basis - it will be a kind of instruction, an outline plan for parents, allowing you to make the final result logical and purposeful, but small details can be changed at your discretion.
In the process of independently thinking through the program, you must first decide for what age of the baby it is being created. This is the only way to formulate adequate tasks available for the child to perform. To better understand what tasks children are able to perform at different ages, you can use all the same ready-made programs, but in general there is nothing complicated there.
The younger group (1-2 years old) mostly abstractly kneads the dough and rolls sausages with balls, the middle group (3-4 years old) can sculpt composite figures with the help of the older ones, but the older one (5-6 years old) is able to perform rather complex tasks - to create pictures and compositions.
At the same time, the task should not be formulated as “make such and such a figure”, the compiler of the program should start only from those useful skills that may appear in the child in the process:
- For the smallest, such tasks are the development of motor skills and hand muscles.
- Middle-aged children should be given tasks aimed at deepening interest in modeling (achieved both by the bright color of the material and an attractive end result), a more thorough acquaintance with the properties, developing an understanding of the creativity and nature of the surrounding objects, as well as the formation of basic modeling skills - giving a piece of mass the necessary shape.
- At an older age, the emphasis is on creativity and fantasy - the child is already able to do something himself, and all that remains is to push him to ensure that his creations become more and more complex.
The origins of dough modeling go back far into the past. There is a legend that it was invented by Slavic chefs who were bored and had fun creating interesting, edible figures from dough. In addition, this material is one of the cheapest and available to everyone. Therefore, in our time, this type of creativity is popular, everyone has flour, water and salt in the house. So, some interesting do-it-yourself salt dough crafts, with photos and step-by-step instructions.
Salt dough crafts
If you decide to touch this art, and testoplasty is really such, you need to learn in detail about the material from which you will sculpt. For novice dough lovers, it is worth noting that the recipe is very simple.
- Flour - one glass
- Salt - half a cup
- Water - 125 ml
It is worth remembering that salt is heavier than flour, so you need to take it half as much!
To sculpt thin relief figures, you need to add PVA glue, or starch, or wallpaper glue to the dough. To choose from one tablespoon, pre-mix wallpaper glue with water. To facilitate the kneading process, use a mixer, it will make it of high quality and simplify the work with your hands.
For modeling from colored dough, food coloring is used, if there are none, you can take ordinary paint. If you need a rich chocolate color, add a small amount of cocoa. Remember that when drying, the dough loses its color saturation. Therefore, it is better to shift the dye than not to report. Coating the finished dough crafts with varnish will make it brighter and more practical.
Advantages
- It is one of the cheapest and environmentally friendly materials.
- Does not stain hands (although this statement is relative)
- It is easy to use, very flexible and allows you to perform parts of any complexity.
"Pig"
Consider the easiest way to sculpt.
To work you need:
- Salty dough
- tassel
- Stack
- Paints
- toothpicks
How to do it
- Roll the dough into a ball and give it the appearance of an oval, this will be the body of the pig.
- Make a second ball (head) and use a toothpick to put it on the body.
- Make a small heel for a piglet, a flattened ball with holes, you can make holes with the back of a pencil.
- Making ears is also not difficult, moisten the triangles with water and attach carefully to the head.
- Do the legs like this, roll up two sausages, make a small incision from one end, attach the legs to the body with the other end.
- Our piglet will sit in a basin, for this, roll out a ball of dough and give it the appearance of a basin.
- Seat the pig in a bowl and paint your craft with paints.
- Let your masterpiece dry.
Master class how to make a pig out of dough step by step video instruction
little secrets
Everyone in the house has a garlic press. It can be used at work by passing the dough through it to get long curls. They can be used in the form of hair, wool for your crafts. Having a tea sieve at home will turn out thinner vermicelli, for finer craft details.
A comb can also be used when sculpting, it will perfectly print a ribbed pattern on it.
"Candlestick"
Ingredients
- puff pastry
- eggs (for brushing)
- prunes
- chocolate
Cooking method
- Roll out the dough on the table. The thickness should not exceed 0.5 cm. Using a glass, cut out circles.
- In the middle of the finished circles place
stuffing. It can be prunes, dried apricots, jam, the main thing is that the filling is not liquid. - From each circle we form an asterisk (collecting up like a bag)
- Cut the edges with pastry scissors. And we bend each strip, turning them to the center.
- We form a flower and coat with an egg.
- We bake in the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees.
- We decorate our flowers. You can put some jam in the middle.
- We take a flat dish and with the help of melted chocolate we draw a stem and leaves for our delicious crafts. We distribute the finished flowers in the right places on the plate and our unusual flower is ready.
"Delicious squirrel"
To prepare such a craft, you need to take:
- 500 g flour
- 40 g yeast
- 100 g butter
- 100 g granulated sugar
- 250 ml water (milk)
- 1 yolk
- 60 pcs. nuts almonds shelled
- cardboard template
Cooking method
- Dissolve yeast in warm water and add sugar, mix well.
- Knead the dough. Mix flour with butter, add the finished yeast mixture to it. Put in a warm place.
- After 45 minutes, divide the dough into lumps and roll each one 1 cm thick.
- You need to put ready-made templates with the image of a squirrel on the dough and, using a sharp knife, cut out the figure along the contour.
- Beat the yolk, and coat the squirrel with a brush.
- Decorate the figurine with almonds spreading it on the tail. We make eyes with raisins.
- We spread the muffin on a baking sheet, and bake at a temperature of 190 degrees for about half an hour.
Sculpting is a great way to develop fine motor skills in children. However, kids are very fond of tasting everything, so traditional modeling materials, like clay or plasticine, are often not suitable for classes. There is a great alternative - salt dough: it is very easy to sculpt from it, it is much softer and more pliable than the same plasticine, and at the same time, it is absolutely safe for the child.
Any product can be made from this material. Small children (from one and a half years old) can, under your guidance, try to create simple figurines from salt dough, and an older child - any crafts, souvenirs or toys that only imagination and skill are capable of.
How to make salt dough?
On top of all the benefits of this material for modeling, it is also very affordable, as it can be quickly made in your kitchen.
There are many recipes for making salt dough, so everyone has the opportunity to choose the most convenient and simple for themselves.
Here is one way:
- take a glass of salt (about 200 g), add 2 cups of flour, and dilute with water (more than half a glass), knead the dough;
- you will determine the degree of its readiness along the way: if the dough sticks to your hands and stretches too much, add a little more flour, and if it crumbles, then there is not enough water;
- try to roll the ball and make a few recesses in it (the finished dough will keep its shape well without blurring);
- when kneading, it is recommended to add a little (a tablespoon) of vegetable oil;
- for sculpting relief figures, add 2 tablespoons of starch;
- wrap the well-mixed mass with polyethylene and refrigerate for several hours;
- toys made from salt dough can be painted ready-made, or you can immediately prepare colored dough (make it in several separate containers and add food coloring, instant coffee, beetroot or carrot juice, acrylic or gouache paints, etc. when kneading).
You can watch special master classes if you are going to sculpt for the first time.
The goal of modeling classes for children should be to form an interest in this art, to familiarize themselves with all the properties and capabilities of the material: the dough can be torn, crushed, flattened, rolled, crumbled, dried. Teach your child to invent stories, make toys or figurines of acting characters for them, and combine them into whole large compositions. This will help you not only develop and improve the fine motor skills of children, but will also develop their imagination, imagination, and speech.
Making simple crafts with kids
Sculpt should be on a special board for modeling or a baking sheet. Also prepare a small rolling pin to roll out the dough, a brush (you will sometimes have to moisten the dough with water), stacks - sticks for working with plasticine or dough, other details, depending on the direction of your work (paints, molds, decorations, etc.).
If you are just starting to work with a small child, choose the simplest schemes and master classes so that it is easy and interesting for children to sculpt products.
First, you can do something by showing it to the child, then perform actions with his hand, and then let him try to create a toy from salt dough with his own hands.
Come up with a fairy tale about your character with your child. For example, it is very easy to make a cute little caterpillar or even her whole family, and then play with them.
In the same way, other toys are created very simply - octopuses, a snake, cats, fish, birds, vegetables and fruits. You can cut blanks out of cardboard, and then circle them already on the test.
Also, for little children, a very simple master class on making figures from salt dough as Christmas tree decorations will be available.
As a memorable home souvenir, you can make prints of the child's legs and hands, and on the back, sign how old the baby was.
Making more complex toys
There are master classes that show that you can create more complex toys, figurines, or even entire compositions with your own hands. For example, try with older children to make a cute hedgehog or the whole hedgehog family.
In the same way, you can make a sheep, an owl, and any other voluminous toy.
Master classes will help you create even whole paintings from salt dough, which will become not only an excellent decoration for your home, but also a wonderful original souvenir for a gift. Pictures are best sculpted on fabric, foil or painted cardboard. When the craft is completely dry, paint it and varnish it.
