Salt Dough Autumn Leaves

We have been busy baking in our house hold. Not cookies or cakes but salt dough. Its the time of year where keepsakes in particular are such fun to make as you can theme them into cute little pumpkins, snowmen or even Christmas trees. We have a really simple, easy to follow Salt Dough recipe that will allow you to make some of these fabulous keepsakes too!

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Today we haven't been making keepsakes as such, but beautiful salt dough leaves. Autumn term has arrived. The children have returned back to school and the weather is that little bit cooler. I took the twins for a walk around the woods after taking Neve to school and it was quite refreshing watching the leaves bobbing around in the wind. Although it marks the beginning of lots of wonderful festivities - it's quite daunting how quickly this year has passed us by.

I purchased the leaf cutters from Amazon. I was so impressed with them. I'm already on the lookout for some snowflake ones for winter! Really easy to operate and great for building up fine motor control in smaller hands.

You push them down into the dough, like you would a normal cutter, yet on the top is a button you push down to sink the print into the dough and remove it from the cutter. These cutters are usually used for baking, however work great with play dough and salt dough too!

Once we had a batch of Salt dough created we were off. (Remember to check out the Salt Dough Recipe we use).



Neve did a great job of rolling out the dough and pressing down the cutters. We haven't used cutters like this before so she was fascinated with the prints they left on the leaves. I enjoyed some lovely one on one time here with her which is why the video of this activity doesn't have a clip of her using them. Sometimes its important to roll with the moment and enjoy the time together.

What I liked more than anything about this activity was the vocabulary and conversations that cropped up while we were busy making them. Neve spoke about different places she had seen leaves and even noticed that the maple leaf was the same leaf on the Canadian flag!


How effective do they look? I have only recently started to use grease proof paper when baking salt dough and I can't believe I haven't used it sooner. It really does make the process much easier and you have no sticking what so ever. This makes it really simple to flip them over when you're baking them in the oven. So I highly recommend that you invest in some before you make any salt dough ornaments or keepsakes.


Think we can all agree that she did an amazing job!!!!
We then threadded through string so we were able to hang them up onto some twigs that Neve had gathered together on her Autumn conker collecting walk we do every year!



You could go on to use your Salt Dough leaves to not only decorate your homes and classrooms but to aid activities and displays! Use them in the Numeracy area for counting. Add them to the drawing table to have a go at drawing them free hand or drawing around them. Use them at the question table to ask children about why leaves change colour. Hide them in the sand tray. Use them to create small world play invitations along with key stories for this time of year!

If you go on to create some be sure to get in touch with us and let us see what you have been busy making! We love seeing what you get up to!