Drawing in Salt and Flour

This activity could not be simpler! It is an easy and fun activity that children and toddlers will enjoy at home. There is also so much learning that will take place during this time. F gave me the inspiration after our Edible Farm Small World activity. She started making patterns in the cocoa powder with her fingers and I wanted to give her the opportunity to do more play like this.

Set Up

To see which one worked better, I tried salt on the baking tray, like this one from Amazon, and flour on the table. The salt on the tray was definitely less messy and worked well for them to ‘write’ in. The flour straight on the table was far messier and they enjoyed making patterns in it. When I do this activity again my preference would be for the salt. Just be mindful that your little one doesn’t start licking the salt up!

They were both keen to try the salt and flour. Whilst they were both happy enough playing together with the flour, they decided to enforce the rule that the salt was for one person at a time! And it worked. They kept switching over which was great. Not only was this a letter writing opportunity for M but it also quickly turned into a phonics activity. Initially I wrote a simple word and encouraged M to segment and then blend the word. M then asked me to choose a word for her to spell eg bed. She was also very keen to write her own and daddy’s name. F of course wanted to do exactly what her big sister was doing; so was keen to copy and ‘write’ in the salt.

The flour was used for drawing patterns, making mounds with and general messy play. This was completely fine as they were enjoying it and it was still valuable learning. F also at one point decided that the flowers in the garden needed flour! So went about giving them all a dusting! Next time I repeat this activity I will probably stick to salt in a tray. The salt was easy to pour back into a container ready for the next time. So there was no waste! This is such a simple, fun activity that can easily be done at home and can be adapted for so many purposes: phonics, name writing, number writing and general sensory play.