Salt Dough Oil Lamps

Today my two little boys and I tried a project that has some Spirit Play potential. We made salt-dough oil lamps.

It could be fun to make these for Diwali. During Diwali, people light lamps shaped like the third one above and open doors and windows so that the Goddess Lakshmi can find her way into their homes.

Since many children have never seen oil used as fuel for a flame, this could make a powerful piece of a Hanukkah story about the small bit of oil that lasted for eight days.

There is also a Bible story about a widow and olive oil. The widow, whose dead husband was one of the disciples, appeals to the prophet Elijah for help paying her husband's debts before the creditors come to claim her two sons as slaves. Elijah tells her to take the one small jar of oil that is her valuable possession, to borrow oil lamps from all her neighbors, and to fill all the lamps from the one jar. Amazingly, the one small jar of oil lasts enough to fill all the lamps--when the last lamp is filled, the jar of oil then runs out. She and her sons are able to sell the oil and make enough money to pay the debts and live off the remainder. The interpretation most often used here is that God provides for His followers in times of need, and that followers should have faith in this provision. But, a UU take on this might focus on the generosity of the neighbors; is it possible that the neighbors would have each given a lamp that had some oil already in it, knowing the widow's precarious situation? That would be a story of God's love spreading through generosity and caring. In reaching out to her neighbors--hard as that might have been--the widow is offering her community the opportunity to embody compassion.

There are likely other stories featuring oil lamps, too.

I looked online for a handful of oil lamp shapes, and we got a good batch of salt dough mixed up.
After forming the lamps, we baked them for a few hours at 200 degrees (turning them over once in the process), added olive oil once they'd cooled, and then added short cotton wicks. When we lit the wicks, they burned down quickly and blackened the edge of the lamp where they touched. I'll have to investigate if there is a special wick for oil, because that didn't seem exactly right.

My older boy, especially, got into this project. He was curious and experimental about the science of the fire, and he speculated about the time periods and cultures in which lamps like these might have been used. My younger boy mostly played with some leftover salt dough, until it was time to light the flames, and then he wanted to fashion and old-style candle snuffer to ceremoniously douse the flames.