Pirate Salt Dough Fun!

This month we have chosen the theme “Ye Old Pirates!” and we have a great kids pirate book and craft to do with your kids.

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Our fascination with pirates, all began when we entered a kids’ craft video contest hosted by Advil this winter and my whole family got involved with the production.  If you want to see our video, click on the picture below.  It shows how to make an awesome Sponge Pirate Ship that’s perfect for bathtime fun for kids of all ages!

Ever since our video participation, my son Onetime, (and I) have been obsessed with all things PIRATE!

When we went on a recent first airplane flight, I bought a few new books to keep Onetime busy on the flight, and I purposely looked for a pirate-themed one because I knew it would hold his attention.

After searching online for a while and scanning some local bookstores, I came up with a winner!  It’s called Plunge into the Pirate Pool by Caryl Hart and Ed Eaves and my almost 3 year old son LOVES it!
This story is probably mostly appropriate for kids 3+.  The illustrations really grabbed me at first, but the story is even better!  It follows a young boy who has an amazing imagination and who loves to read.

When he goes to the pool for swimming lessons one day, he imagines a rollicking adventure with a great white shark attacking (ends up being a harmless submarine), hairy pirates (that turn out to be good guys), and a fun adventure into the ocean depths to find treasure. In the end, the treasure is found, but it’s not what you expect.

My son loves the anticipation that builds up in this story, and I love the language that is used.  It’s really catchy and fun for adults to read aloud!

I hope you check it out if your child is interested in pirates!  If you do – you’ll maybe also want to try our craft that follows the pirate theme.  If you have never made anything out of salt-dough – you and your child will really enjoy this activity.  If you have, I hope you enjoy our twist.

We will show you how to make 2 special pirate salt-dough projects today:  Salt-Dough Pirate Treasure, otherwise known as Pieces of Eight, and a Salt Dough Pirate Necklace perfect for pretend play or Halloween.

You Will Need:

• 1 cup Flour
• 1/2 cup Salt
• 1/2 cup Water
• A mixing bowl and spoon, and a rolling pin and plastic knife, cookie/baking sheet
• Tinfoil
• Acrylic Paints (we used red, white, black, and gold!)
• A shoelace or string for the necklace

Mix all the ingredients together and squeeze until it resembles dough.  Then create your figures.  Bake them at 250 degrees for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until golden brown.

Special Instructions for the Pieces of Eight Pirate Salt Dough Treasure

To make the pieces of eight (pirate gold coins!), help your child roll out the salt dough until it is no more than 1cm thick.  Give your child a circular cookie cutter, or a cap from a hairspray bottle and have them cut out a bunch of circles of dough.

Place each coin onto a cookie sheet and show your child how to use a plastic knife to cut an X into the top of each coin.

Bake and then paint the coins gold to look like real money!  We went over the X with some brown paint to make it stand out.

Special Instructions for the Pirate Necklace

This was Onetime’s “bad pirate” face!

To make the beads, show your child how to roll the dough into balls.  Then take a little roll of tinfoil and press it through the ball so you have a bead.  The tinfoil stops the dough bead hole from closing up while baking.

Let your child be creative with whatever they want to put on the necklace.  Onetime made some abstract shapes and made designs in them with the plastic knife.  We also made some shark’s teeth and I made a skull amulet for fun! (Who said moms don’t like to play too!)

After baking, we had fun painting our necklace pieces and then stringing them onto a red shoelace.

The necklace was a fabulous final touch to a pirate costume for a morning of pirate pretend play!  You could always make a fun octopus too out of dough (like in Plunge into the Pirate Pool).  Wish we’d thought of that before!

For other pirate ideas, check out our Pirate Sea-View Telescope Craft, our Interactive Pirate-Themed Felt Storyboard, our Treasure Playdough activity, our Sponge Pirate Ship, our Paper Roll Pirates, and our DIY Kids’ Treasure Hunt.

I told you we were obsessed!

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Happy sailing landlubbers!

If you’re looking for even more pirate art and activity ideas, be sure to FOLLOW our Pirate board on Pinterest:  Follow One Time Through’s board Pirate Art and Activities on Pinterest.