DIY Magnetic Ornament Advent Calendar for the Fridge

DIY Magnetic Ornament Advent Calendar for the Fridge

Make your own advent calendar with your kids out of easy-to-make salt dough ornaments!  This activity is great to allow kids the chance to help out in the kitchen.  Let them knead and roll out the dough for a great sensory experience.  I used a simple salt dough recipe that I found at the imagination tree (a wonderful site full of great crafts to make at home).  After we rolled and cut our ornaments, I used a straw to make the hole to use for the ribbon. This works really well.  We also chose to divide our dough into 4 equal parts and then used food coloring gel to make the different colors.  Toward the end when we only had a little left of each color, I rolled and lined them up and then used the rolling pin to blend the colors together.  This makes a really nice rainbow effect.

You'll want to bake these in the oven at 200 degrees fahrenheit for about 2 hours.  We chose to color ours with crayons as soon as they were out of the oven to encourage the wax to melt for some fun effects.  They will be warm, but will not burn the fingers.  They will cool quickly so you may have to put them back in the oven to warm up again if you want to be more thorough. 

I used store bought number stickers to put on the front of the ornaments.  I put a small dab of glue under them to encourage them to stay.

And finally I attached magnets to the back so that they could be easily attached to the refridgerator. I used two for the bigger ornaments.  Self-adhesive magnets will work.  Be careful when using Elmer's glue as it could soften the dough again.  Let it dry well before hanging. 

And that's it!  Your own made-at-home advent calendar.