The Gift of a Loving Heart

For Mother's Day the children made heart necklaces out of salt dough and Shrinky Dinks.

It was for Mother's Day, but a lot of them did not make it out the door until this week, and even then, most of the children said they wanted to wear and keep them.  When I think of gifts, the most precious for me are the ones that are just pure love given through a hug, a smile, or a kind word and action, and daily I get to see the children give this to their parents.  I watch them hug and kiss their parents good bye, sometimes with so much love they cannot bare leaving their side, and I also see them run their parents over with the excitement of seeing them when they return.  These are just simple exchanges, but the most precious, and I can speak for myself, the best gift is watching my daughter wear the necklace she made for "me," and running up to me to give me a kiss with the gift of her loving heart.

Since I like to show the process of how the children make their artwork, here are some pictures of our process.  They first made the salt dough, the recipe we use is:

1-Cup Salt

2-Cups Flour

1-Cup Cold Water

Mix and Bake in oven at 250 degrees for 2 hours 

or 

Bake at 250 degrees in a toaster oven for 45 min.

The children used a heart cookie cutter and then pressed their thumb prints into the necklace, on a different day we opted out of the thumb print.

Using the end of a paint brush they put a hole in their charm.

They painted their hearts with gold and silver acrylic paint.

On another day I cut heart shapes out of shrinky dink paper and using sharpie markers they colored the hearts or drew a picture of themselves.  We baked these at 200 degrees for a couple minute, and then I drilled a hole in them with a dremel tool, and tied the two heart together.

They look sweet hanging all together.