How We Made It, Why we Made it, and Would We Make It Again?
To see more pictures of our Tracing Salt, please click on the right arrow located on the photo below. 🙂
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Tracing mediums, such as salt, can be useful for a lot of things, such as tracing letters of the alphabet, numbers, or even shapes!
The idea behind writing alphabet letters in mediums like salt, is that the student learns (while having fun) the correct manner in which to write each letter. Tracing letters can promote smooth transition into writing and the beginning stages of penmanship.
When I was young, my Mom taught my siblings and I play a tracing game which entailed us tracing the letters on each others’s backs….the person whose back that we traced on, had to try to guess what letter it was. Having someone trace a letter on one’s back can tickle quite a bit, and we often ended up laughing our way through the game! Some childhood friends also introduced us to the idea of using shaving cream to trace our letters….we loved this activity! Tracing in salt or other tracing mediums, can be a really fun way to learn letters! 🙂
For very young ones, there are many other uses for tracing mediums! One of my kiddos who cannot yet trace shapes, loves having his Daddy and I trace shapes in the sand or dirt for him, and will often request his favorite shapes to be drawn; these simple moments and experiences All make for great learning opportunities that are fun!
How we Made Tracing Salt:
NEEDED SUPPLIES:
- Salt (we used a 4lb box of Morton’s Salt, purchased at a grocery store)
- Food Coloring Gel (To match our bee theme, we chose yellow, Wilton Food Gel in Garden Colors)
- 2 Cookie Sheets and/or Casserole type baking dishes
- Ziplock Gallon Sized Baggies
- (Optional) Storage container to put the colored salt in for use during play. (We used these Rubbermaid containers...but found on sale at a grocery store).
- Dump desired amount of Salt into gallon sized bag (I divided into 2 baggies, 2 lbs of salt per baggie, so that each of my older kids could have a plentiful amount).
- Add a few drops of yellow food coloring gel to each baggie of salt; Seal bag.
- Knead and mix food coloring gel into the salt until well combined; adding more gel as needed, to obtain desired color. Be Cautious about amount of food gel added; too much food gel produces very wet salt, which will cause increased clumping during usage!!
- After the salt and gel have been mixed together well, and salt has as few clumps as possible, spread each bag of the colored salt onto a cookie tray or large baking dish.
- Allow Salt to either air dry, or bake at lowest setting on oven (170 degrees on my oven) for a short period of time. We chose to bake ours for 40 minutes, checking and mixing it at the 20 minute mark. Be aware that baking salt with food gel in it does not exactly produce the best of smells…it is not terrible, just really strange and almost chemical type of smell.
Our Results and Review of this activity and process:
We made one bag of salt with a very light amount of added food gel, and one bag with with a lot of food gel, just to compare their results. When both trays were removed from the oven, the moisture that was added to the salt from the food gel, caused it to harden and clump terribly! I had to give the salt that had more food coloring an additional 20 minutes in the oven, in my attempts to remove the moisture.
If you have ever left salt unsealed in a humid environment, the resulting clumps are a good example of what happens when food gel is added to salt.
I do not have pictures for this part, but I ended having to cut and smash the clumps (messy work!), putting some of the salt back into gallon baggies and going over it with a rolling pin, just to try to remove the clumps. However, even after getting most all of the clumps out, if left to sit for more than a few minutes, the salt still continued to develop clumps during play; most of these clumps could be easily shaken out, but it was still annoying and hindering to tracing.
We placed each 2 Lb bag of salt into large, Rubbermaid casserole containers to allow for a tabletop sandbox of sorts. My kiddos love this and had a very fun playtime! See the game we play with salt, below!
A FUN GAME (that can also be used with SAND, instead of salt!):
To fit in with our current Bee Unit Study, I played a game with my Daughter where we hide these wooden bees, into the containers of salt. I hid 3 bees in the sand to start with, so she could get an idea of how to play. To hide the bees, I simply dropped 3 bees on top of the salt, counting aloud (“one, two, three!”), as I dropped each bee.
Next, I excitedly exclaimed, “Uh oh! Where are the bees?! Let’s find the bees!” We count aloud as we find each bee, until we locate the 3rd bee. After doing this once or twice, she finds the bees all by herself. She can also hide them herself, but (at her request), I often continue to hide the bees for while. Once EG had the idea of finding the hidden bees, we used the number of bee that correlated with the number she was learning at the time (#5). The fun and easy game makes for a great way to work on difficult or problem numbers with our kiddos, as well as to reinforce those numbers that they already know. I also love that this activity makes for some fun and special bonding time! EG always has a great time and often asks for this activity.
Would I do make this colored salt again? – Um, no; probably not. At least, Not until the kids are old enough to help make it themselves….at that point, I would probably aid in their making it, but only for their sake. The colored salt when finished is (in my opinion) messy, difficult to work with, and impractical; especially when there are soooo many better options available that do the same thing (without so much hassle). I prefer fine sand over this DIY colored salt, anyday! If I absolutely needed to have salt, I would use plain (un-colored) salt, just to prolong the clumping process a bit.
During play, this salt gets everywhere….and I do mean everywhere! I would greatly prefer that the kids use it outside, on our patio. We have been using it inside, at our kitchen table, due to the weather. The fine consistency of this salt means that it inevitably makes its way to the floor; where it is difficult to see with one’s eyes, and sticks to the bottom of feet and shoes….it is not fun when salt falls onto tile or hardwood floors; especially laminate flooring, as the consistency of salt underfoot leads to a loss of traction and some unpleasant sliding and/or falls accross the floor!
Because of the increased loss of foot traction issue (for some reason salt is worse than beans and other sensory items for this), the use of colored salt inside the house really is not practical for us; at least not at this time in our lives! I find plain salt can be useful with my older students, but it is not the best with our young ones!
However, all that being said, though we do not use it often, this salt still sits on our shelf its Rubbermaid containers and we have yet to toss it….(even though sometimes I really want to!!!)
The kids lOVE playing with this activity and I consider it a successful in the sense that we learned some great games and tools that can transfer over to other tracing mediums, even though salt is not a great longterm option for us. Our kiddos much prefer using kinetic and regular sands.
Have you made colored salt? What were your results? Does using salt for tracing or other puposes work well for your family, or do you prefer the use of other things for tracing?
Please comment below! I would LOVE to hear your thoughts and experiences! 🙂
And, it is on to the next lesson!
Thank you so much for stopping by and reading my post! I hope to see you again soon!
~Gloria