Name tracing ... with color salt

Name tracing ... with color salt


My 3 year doesn't like tracing letters. He can write all the letters if he is in the mood. But usually gives me a hard time and says its boring. He wants to do experiments all the time and want to play with food coloring. So we tried to make it interesting by tracing with glue and adding food coloring of course.

Items needed for this activity:
- construction paper
- q-tips or dropper (we used medicine dropper)
- salt
- glue
- sharpie / pen
- food colors
- water

 I drew my son's name on a piece of paper and let him trace it with glue.

Then we added salt all over the glue. This part was fun for him as he watched all the salt stick to the glue and others just fall off. This can get messy, so help them with clearing the extra salt off the paper.
(Our activities sure gets messy at times, so I try to do it outside as much as possible when the weather allows. I also use a huge tray, like the one in Ikea, for all their activities. )

 Now mix each food coloring with a spoon of water in separate bowls. My son loves this part. Keep mixing colors to get the secondary colors.

Use a dropper or a q-tip to drop the colors on the salt. Make sure the kids use just a drop of two. If they use too much, it becomes messy.

He wanted to keep going, so we added some swirls around the name.