Salt Painting

This post may contain affiliate links.

Salt painting gives an interesting twist to regular painting, and it makes good use of a glue bottle for hand strengthening. Before you get to the painting part, you squeeze glue onto the paper in the pattern that you want the paint to be in. You can either put the glue on free hand, or you can put it on a template that needs to be outlined.

Before the glue dries, you need to sprinkle (more like pour) salt all over the glue to get a good coating. Once the glue is well coated with salt, and you have poured off the excess salt, you can start putting the paint on. I don’t know if it is better to wait for the glue to dry first or not because I was not willing to wait.

I used watered down washable paint, but regular water color is very good as well.

I had the kids use eye droppers to put the water on the salt because I wanted them to pinch. They did get a little carried away with the water.  It works well to just touch a loaded brush to the salt, and the colored water will be sucked up by the salt and will spread along the lines.

This activity can be challenging for people with weak hands, as squeezing glue takes some strength. If you use the eye droppers, some pinch strength is involved as well.

Materials:

• Paper
• White glue
• Salt
• Water color paint
• Water
• Eye droppers, or paint brushes

Skills:

• Hand strength
• Finger strength
• Fine motor
• Visual perception
• Motor planning