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Salt Dough Snowman Decorations

For our last The Snowman activity for Storybook Advent this year we are using one of our favourite crafting materials Salt Dough and making some Christmas ornaments for the tree.

Salt Dough Snowmen

The snowman salt dough decorations

We love the snowman in our house. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without watching the snowman on TV. I grew up watching it throughout my childhood and now look forward to watching it with my girls each year.

We also have the book which is part of our book advent calendar each year.

My children love crafting so we always do lots of Christmas crafts throughout December. Inspired by the snowman, this year we decided to make salt dough snowmen. Salt dough is fantastic for children. It doesn’t cost a lot to make, it’s simple to make and there are so many creative ways to use it.

child making salt dough
A child weighing the ingredients for salt dough

We started by making a batch of salt dough following the recipe below. This recipe makes enough to make 12 snowmen using the snowman cookie cutter we have.

Salt Dough Snowmen ready to be oven dried
Salt dough ready for drying in the oven

My 3 year old loved helping to mix and knead the dough. She also loved rolling out the dough and cutting out the snowmen too. These are all great fine motor skills for children. The hardest part of this activity with young children is waiting for the salt dough snowmen to dry out in the oven. It takes several hours which as any parent of young children will know is a long time.

Once dry there are endless ways your children can decorate these snowmen. I used Sharpies to decorate a couple myself knowing these would be the most likely to look like snowmen. We’ve used them as props whilst reading The Snowman. My daughter loved being able to act out the story with her snowmen. The party scene is her favourite to act out with our salt dough snowmen.

child painting snowmen made with salt dough using ready-mixed kids' paints
Kid painting their salt dough snowman

The rest of the snowmen, I gave to my children to paint using poster paints. They had great fun painting them all their favourite colours. If you want to hang the decorations on your tree then make a hole in the dough before you bake them.

kids crafts - snowmen made from salt dough

Salt Dough Snowman recipe

  • 250g plain flour
  • 125g salt
  • 125ml water

If you want extra white salt dough check out our White Salt Dough recipe.

How to make Snowmen Salt Dough Ornaments

child making decorations with a cookie cutter
Making Salt Dough ornaments cutting the shapes our with cookie cutters.
  1. Preheat the oven to the lowest setting (ours is 50C).
  2. Start by weighing all the ingredients out and mixing them all together in a large bowl. This is a great bit to do with preschoolers. If you use digital scales, it’s perfect for working on number recognition.
  3. Mix until it forms a dough. You may need to add a little more water at this point until it all comes together to form a dough.
  4. Flour the work surface and transfer the dough to the surface. Knead briefly and then roll out the dough until it is about 1cm thick. 
  5. Cut out the snowmen using your cookie cutter and carefully transfer them to a baking tray. Repeat until you have used all your dough up. Then transfer the tray to the oven. Bake until the snowmen are solid. This took between 3-4 hours for ours but it will vary.
  6. Once the snowmen are cool, decorate them however you want.
finished salt dough snowmen decorated with sharpies
The finished decorated salt dough snowmen
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More SNowman Inspired Crafts and Activities for Kids

Create your own sensory bag based on the classic picture book The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. Use the melted snowman for some sensory mess free play.
Inspired by the classic Christmas picture book The Snowman by Raymond Briggs bake these ever so simple Snowball Cookies made with just 3-ingredients.
kids crafts - easy to make snowmen salt dough decorations
Author
Claire at The Ladybirds' Adventures

Claire blogs at The ladybirds’ adventures. A blog where she shares her passion for exploring the UK, getting children outdoors as well as inspiration for seasonal play and learning.

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