Crayon Salt Dough Recipe (2024)

• Proprioception, Sensory

• byColleen Beck OTR/L
• May 18, 2015

This crayon salt dough recipe is an old one here on The OT Toolbox. It’s a dough recipe that is not only bright and vivid, it’s a great salt dough recipe that kids love to make. In fact, if you are wondering about how to color salt dough, we have the tips for you…it involves using crayons in the recipe! This salt dough recipe is a version of our crayon play dough that is tinted with the wax of crayons, giving it a bright and bold hue.

Crayon Salt Dough Recipe

If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that we have a small love of homemade play dough. (And by small, I mean huge).

Not only that, we have a tendency to melt down crayons and create bold, bright, and beautifully soft crayon play dough. We’ve mademetallic sparkly crayon play doughand dough with everyshade of red crayonthat there is.

We’ve even melted down crayons and madecrayon floam doughfor a super fun sensory dough. Today, we’re sharing our latest crayon experiment:

Crayon Salt Dough!

How to make salt dough dyed with bright and bold colors of Crayons?

to make our Crayon Salt Dough, we used portions of ourcrayon play doughtechnique. I’m including affiliate links for some items you may need to purchase to make this Crayon Salt Dough.

We used a few materials in this sensory dough recipe:

1. 2-3 chopped crayonscrayons(This is the tried and true brand that works for all the crayon doughs that we’ve made.) I say 2-3 because we used broken crayons that have seen their days of coloring book fame gone. In other words, they are the bits and pieces of crayons that are floating around the bottom of the crayon bin. I’ve found that a difference of 2 or 3 crayons does not matter all that much when it comes to bright and vivid colors you will get from using crayons to dye play dough or salt dough.
2. 1 teaspoonvegetable oil
3. 1 cupsalt
4. 2 cupsflour
5. 1 cup water

Now, when we made our salt dough, we made a few different colors. So, instead of using the measurements above, I had the kids measure out all of the ingredients and then divide the dry ingredients into three different bowls.

If you are wondering what to do with old crayons, this is it!

I then made three batches of salt dough. You could do the same to make a few different colors…and with a huge box of gorgeouscrayons, you’ll probably want a few different bright and beautiful colors.

I will describe the instructions on making just one batch of crayon salt dough so that measurements are not confused.

Crayon Salt Dough Crayon Play Dough Recipe

Once you have your ingredients for the crayon dough gathered, next you can get started:

1. Prepare the dry ingredients: Mix together in a bowl, the 1 cup saltand2 cupsflour.
2. Set the dry ingredients aside.
3. Peel the wrapper from and chop up the 2-3 crayons.
4. Pour the 1 teaspoon ofvegetable oilinto a sauce pan. We found the cheapest sauce pan that we could and use it for all of our kitchen experiments. (i.e. I would not use it for cooking actual food!)
5. Turn on the burner and add the chopped crayon to the oil. Do not let the oil heat up too much!
6. Stir while adding 1 cup of water.
7. Continue stirring and slowly add in the dry mixture. Stir until the dough begins to lump together.
8. Dump out onto parchment paper or other surface.
9. Allow the dough to cool to touch. Knead the dough until smooth. Then knead a little more. If the dough is too sticky, add a bit more flour in 1/4 cup increments.

Start to play!

We used our dough to create number manipulatives usingnumber cookie cutters. They are still drying, but we have big plans for these cuties! Be sure to stop back soon to see how we’re using them in all kinds of counting and ordering games.

We let these cut outs dry for several days on wax paper. I washesitantto try slow heating them in the oven like a typical salt dough recipebecauseof the wax content. I like my oven a little too much for that experiment!

You may want to see our other Crayon Dough Recipes:

Gold, Silver, & Bronze Metallic Crayon Play Dough

Patriotic Crayon Salt Dough Recipe

Crayon Salt Dough Recipe

Crayon Floam Dough Recipe

Crayon Shaving Art

Shades of Red Crayon Play Dough

Harold and the Purple Crayon Play Dough

Metallic Crayon Dough

Shades of red crayon play dough

Original Crayon Play Dough Recipe

Rainbow Crayon Play Dough