When we first started to make sensory salt, we only made a small batch here and there. And we didn't use it too often. Mainly we just created it as a simple add-on activity for our themed units. We also used them for tracing trays and occasionally for sensory bins. But they weren't very popular. Then for Valentine's Day I created a pink batch that was scented with rose water and my son was just so amazed by it that he literally requested to play in it every day since! I guess now I can say it is a sensory material that he absolutely loves and plays with every day. Because of this I decided to make more batches, in a wide range of colours, so that we can use them for all sorts of activities!
Salt
(lots of it! we used 26 oz for each colour)Food colouring gels (we used Wilton's Neon
and Pastels
) or liquid food colouring (Assorted 
and Neon
)A bowl and whisk/spoon/fork for stirring
Sturdy Ziploc bags
Plastic gloves
(optional, but I find food prep gloves work well)We used Magenta, orange, teal, purple, pink, yellow, green and blue. And a batch of red that was made last minute with a different brand of food colouring gels (you can definitely tell the difference!).
We also used nine containers of salt (ninth container is not pictured, because I made the red batch last - since I totally meant to make red and not a second batch of magenta, oops!). You should have seen the look on the cashiers face when I bought them all. :)
There are two ways you can make coloured salt. If you need to make it quickly or you are making it with a child (mine happened to be spending the afternoon with Grammy, so this was a surprise for them!), you can pour the salt into a sturdy Ziploc bag, add the food colouring and seal it. Then shake it up real good until all the colour is blended evenly. It may take a few minutes to get it perfect.
The second way is to pour the salt and food colouring into a bowl and stir it up. If you are using liquid food colouring, you may have to add extra, though the colour should spread more easily. I used a generous amount of food colouring gels and the gels will clump, which is why I had the gloves on hand. You don't want to dye your skin, after all. Just knead the salt like you would a batch of play dough. The clumps will all smooth out.
They will all come out lovely! Here's what pink looks like!
I am excited to see Munchkin's reaction when he gets home and sees how many new batches of sensory salt he has to choose from! I suspect that he will like the purple batch most, since that is his favourite colour.
This is how the salt looks while it is being stirred, before you mix it up using your hands. I want to make a rainbow batch for the kids so they can mix it up themselves and watch all the beautiful colours swirl together and blend!
The teal came out really pretty! I love how vibrant the Wilton gels make the salt!
Sky blue!
Lime green!
Magenta pink!
I ended up adding the old batch of magenta to the new batch. You can see how the new batch is darker because it hasn't dried yet. When they were shaken up and mixed, you couldn't tell them apart. Munchkin will love it when he sees that this batch is now twice as big!
Banana yellow! (I really hope to find a batch of primary colours from Wilton so I can create a dark blue, dark green, bright red and bright yellow batch - although in the meantime I love all of these shades!) And I totally forgot to catch a picture of the orange batch before it got bagged up - forgive me! :)
Look at all of those empty containers!
And here are the lovely sensory salts stored away in Ziploc bags! It just keeps them clean and they are easier to store this way, but you can certainly store them in containers if you have enough available.
And this is the red batch... Sadly I am just not thrilled with the colour, because it isn't as bright as the others. But it still works! (It will make the perfect shade of lava for our dinosaur small world!)
It makes me so happy to see so many new sensory salt options! Though I do believe my son will be even more excited than I am! These will make perfect fillers for sensory bins and I can't wait to create sensory salt small worlds for the kids to play in!
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