My church asked me to help come up with craft ideas and prep them for our AWANA Cubbies this year. I thought it was a great fit for me and knew it was a series I could add to my blog to help become a resource for moms and the teachers of our children. This is my salt dough star craft – AWANA Cubbies Bear Hug #13. Week #13 of Cubbies focuses on the wise men following the star, and I wanted to come up with a simple craft that became a visual reminder to the kids about what they learned. The “theme” for the night is “glitter night,” so that goes along with the glitter on the stars. The verse is Matthew 2:10, “When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.”
The first thing you need to do is make up your salt dough. With only 3 ingredients, this is super easy and the kids can do it all. They love to mix it all up by hand too. We had a close friend over to help. Here is the salt dough recipe I like to use. I did 2x the recipe to give me about 40 stars. I guess that all depend on the size of your cookie cutter.
The kids can roll out the dough. I like to use cake dowels to guide the rolling pin. They are 1/4″ thick, so it gives you and your child the no-fail correct thickness.
Using a star cookie cutter, just start to bang out all the stars you might need. To create the hole, I used a plastic drinking straw.
Here are all the stars. You’ll want to cook them on parchment paper, wax paper or a silicone baking mat for 2-3 hours on 250.
You’ll have all of your stars ready for your AWANA Cubbies. I prepped all of these for our Cubbies, but an option is to take all the ingredients the week before the Week #13 meeting and have them help mix up the dough, roll it out and use cookie cutters to create their own salt dough stars.
You will need different color craft paint, sponge brushes, glitter and string, yarn or ribbon to create your final look.
The kids will pick the color of paint they want and paint the whole star. Make sure the paint does not clog the hole.
You can sprinkle out the glitter onto the wet paint, and the stars will dry with the glitter sealed onto the star. If you want to seal in the glitter even more, you can do a final coat of white glue or Mod Podge after the paint and glitter dries. The final step is to help the kids thread in the string through the hole at the top of the star and tie it into a knot. This will happen after the paint dries. This kind of paint dries quickly. For my string I used stretchy elastic chord provided to me by Craft Project Ideas. I know this brand sells at Walmart. They also provided the glitter. Thank you, Craft Project Ideas!
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