SALT!

Last week on a nature walk, we found a deer salt lick.  Logan was really impressed and asked if we could make our own.  I searched it online but couldn't find instructions on how to make a cheap one.  They were all pretty specific with a few ingredients to promote antler growth.  Yep, found all those instructions on hunter's websites where they basically feed a herd on their property and supply a salt lick rich in nutrients that will give them a prize buck with impressive antlers.  Well, I didn't want to spend a lot on this salt lick so we just winged it and decided pure salt should be a good enough lure to get us some good deer sightings.  We have a greenbelt behind our small backyard and our fence is wire so we can see into the greenbelt.  I dug a small area clear of debris and Logan poured salt all over.

We placed it in a spot we can see right outside our school room window. 

Logan also made a trail of salt from our lick to the neighbors yard where we found fresh deer droppings.  We're hoping that if they come back that way, they will follow the trail to our lick.  I sure hope we get some sightings for my Logan.

While we were at it, I wondered what else we could do with salt.  I jumped online while the kids ate breakfast, swagbucked "salt projects for kids", and in minutes, I had a whole list of activities for a salt themed day.  And they all used ingredients I already had on hand.  SWEET!  So here's what we did;

Experiencing Salt
Kian was still awake for this part of school so he joined us.  For the sake of Felicity's preschool, we first just experienced the salt.  I dumped loads of it on Kian's tray (plus a few piles of flour just for fun), and let him go at it.  Felicity and Logan each had a cookie sheet full of salt.  As they dug around in it, we talked about how it felt (rough, scratchy, hard). 

Logan practiced writing Us in it, our letter of the week.

We tasted it and talked about its taste...."salty", of course.

Kian didn't much like it.

Salt Painting
Next we dribbled glue onto construction paper and sprinkled salt on top of the glue to make "salt paintings."  If you do this, make sure to put the cookie sheet under the painting to catch extra salt and to dump excess onto.

Handmade Bath Salt
We're adding this to our Handmade Holiday stash.  These will be from the kids since they did it all themselves.  I will post the recipe we used for them after I test it out in a bath to see how well they work.  Regardless, the kids were proud of their blue lavender bath salt and it was a really fun activity.

Salt Dough Creations
I really wanted to make little pumpkin families for Halloween, since we haven't done ANY Halloween crafts yet.  I had to help Lissy form the ball shapes a bit, but Logan did his all on his own.  We each made a family of 5 pumpkins to represent our family.  I wanted to use the left over dough to make star shapes to turn into ornaments but I was having issues with the dough sticking to the table.  I told the kids to just play with the dough and figured we'd scratch the stars.  I went to work on cutting stems for our pumpkin families.  All of a sudden, they both started handing me beautiful dough stars!  I wasn't watching so I don't know how they managed to not have the sticking issue but I was so pleased that they had persevered and made it work on their own!  It showed me that sometimes stepping aside and just letting them go at it is better than trying to do it for them.  :)  So we filled two cookie sheets full of our sweet pumpkin families and our stars ready for Christmas crafts.  I will post our dough recipe in a later post, along with our finished, painted creations. 

We were going to also make salt crystals to watch grow over the next few days, but time ran away from us.  I guess its always good to have one too many fun activities planned than not enough.  That leaves us another fun salt craft for another day.  Though, I've gotta get more salt!

I'll leave you with this picture of Kian, just because he's so dang cute!  After his salt swiping extravaganza, he happily snoozed away while we did all the rest of our salt madness.