Make some salt dough leaf ornaments using Autumn spice scented salt dough and leaf cutters. A lovely activity for kids to make into decorations for Autumn and which smell lovely for ages!
We recently made this lovely Autumn Spice Salt Dough recipe to match the colours of some leaves we had collected (click link to read those full instructions.) 
We set it out with rolling pins and leaf cutters to create some salt dough leaf ornaments to decorate the house.
I found the leaf cutters here.
They rolled and cut lots of different shaped leaves, using the three colours of salt dough and began to mix some of them together, which created beautiful results too.
We used a small straw to poke a hole in the top of each one before heating, so that we could hang them up later.
We popped them onto a flat baking sheet and heated them in the oven for 3 hours at around 120 degrees Celcius (that’s approx 240 degrees F). I don’t have a fan oven so you could reduce this a little more if you do too.
The idea for salt dough to harden is that the oven dries it out, not cooks it. You need to keep the models thin (1 cm and under is best) and the oven on a warm but not hot temperature, so that they don’t rise.
If they are still doughy in the middle after the allotted time, simply turn them over and heat again for another hour or so.
Once dry and hard we threaded some embroidery silk through the holes and hung them on our little tree branch that we use for decorating. The leaves smell wonderful and each one is different!
You can paint the finished models or add a layer of varnish/ mod-podge to seal them if you want to, but it isn’t vital.
What they are learning while they play:
creativity: using materials to create 3-D models, mixing colours
science: combining dry materials and turning them into something new, observing materials turn from soft to hard due to heat
Search the full Autumn archives here!
And find my Autumn Play and Learning Board here on Pinterest for great ideas found around the web!
Follow Anna @ The Imagination Tree’s board Autumn Play and Learning on Pinterest.
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These are gorgeous! Perfect solution for finishing off our autumnal tree. Thanks for sharing.
Lovely ideas! We made our leaves with ordinary play dough, pushed them gently into baking tins (muffin tins) to make a deep leaf shape and then painted them once baked and dry. Make lovely little candle holders! Link with photos at http://earlyyearsinsider.tumblr.com/post/99048320197/autumn-leaf-craft