Updated Foot prints and stepping stones Recipe and instructions!

What a great idea! Thanks for posting it, Elizabeth.  You post the greatest ideas!

Guess what? I found this website that originally posted this one. And the instructions are so much better there. For one thing, you want to bake it on parchment or grease-free paper so it doesn’t stick.

She shows step by step pictures, and it is so much clearer.

Find it here: http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/06/salt-dough-footprint-keepsakes.html

To make it easy for you, I will copy her post below mine, but be sure to stop by her blog, too okay? She did the work.

Have a super fun time with your kiddos and I think now you will be so happy with the results.

recipe for baby footprint step stones

Can’t you just see Lucy’s little guy’s feet prints in a stone like this? Lucy’s link is in my blogroll, but she is famous the world over, so I doubt you need to know that!

The consensus of responses to this post was that 200 is probably Farenheit, since you are just drying it out, and don’t want to burn it.

One woman responding to the original link said she has taken her son to a local ceramic place every year on his birthday. They get a stone sized piece and she does a hand print in it, then they do one of his inside of hers. What a sweet idea. She says it is her favorite part of his day every year.

I love the idea in the recipe above, too! And, if you have more than one child, you can have them labeled for what age they are and have a path very quickly!

Have you done this before?

It’s an easy-peazy parent/child project for Olympics, don’t you think?

Please do check out her website. She has so many wonderful ideas and creative things for kids and parents to do together.

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Reblog from: http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/06/salt-dough-footprint-keepsakes.html

WEDNESDAY, 15 JUNE 2011

Salt Dough Footprint Keepsakes

These little footprints were very easy and very cheap to make and will make perfect keepsake gifts for daddy this Father’s day!

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Salt dough recipe:

1 cup salt

1 cup plain flour

Half a cup of warm water

Mix together into a large bowl and knead it until smooth and stretchy. This last part is important otherwise the dough remains sticky and quite granular from the salt. If it is still too sticky add a bit more flour, if too dry and crumbly then add a tiny touch more water. A little bit of trial and error is all that is needed and it really is so easy!

Cakie loves the making and mixing part of creating play dough and salt dough and it is a fabulous messy, sensory play experience in its own right, as well as being great for measuring, counting and strengthening those all important hand muscles too!

Once the dough was kneaded I divided it into equal parts and found a shallow bowl that was big enough to accommodate the full length of both girls’ feet. I then squished one part into the bowl and flattened it around to the edges.

I then teased it away from the edges slightly and flipped it out onto a plate. The underside was very smooth with a lovely finish, perfect as a canvas for the footprints!

I then got the girls to tread one foot into the middle of their dough plaques, one at a time (and I had a lovely friend help me too as I took this photo!) With baby Pop we had to make sure she didn’t wriggle or turn her foot to the side as that warps the shape of the print. A firm straight down impression and then lift straight off again works really well. If it gets messed up, the great thing is that you can reform it and try again!

The plaques then went into the oven for 3 hours at  100 degrees C (around 200 degrees F). They need to be placed on baking parchment or greaseproof paper so that they don’t stick. It needs to be on a very low heat for a length of time to thoroughly dry out and harden. If the oven is too hot they will rise and “cook”. The thinner the dough and the lower the temperature, the better these will turn out! If they are still doughy in the centre after 3 hours then turn them over and put them back in for another 2 hours.

If you want to hang yours on the wall then you need to add a hole with a straw before it goes in the oven. I didn’t do that with ours this time as I thought they may be a bit too heavy for hanging.

The next day the girls then painted them using pearlised acrylic paints (we get ours super cheap in The Works) and we left them to dry for a couple of hours.

They love the painting process!

That’s it! Truly very quick and easy!

And here are the finished gifts for Daddy! I have written their names, ages and dates on the back with a Sharpie permanent marker. I intend for these to simply be displayed rather than have a practical purpose, but you could of course use them as paper weights, or thread ribbon through to hang them on the wall.  I hope ours will last a very long time. They will be treasured alongside the salt dough handprints we made last year, which now look so tiny in comparison!

This activity is good for:

• Sensory: messy and tactile exploration
• Motor skills: kneading/ squishing/ rolling/ flattening/ poking/ squeezing/ treading
• Maths: weighing quantities/ counting/ capacity (full, empty)
• PHSE: working independently
• Creativity: painting/ modelling/ sculpting