We made our salt map last Tues. It is now a week and a day later and it is still not totally dry (not to mention the mountains have flopped some)....

Any ideas on how to get it to dry? The thinner parts are all dry but the parts that are thick are still moist. Is it OK to put it in the oven for a bit? Wondering if this is because we are in FL and it is humid now??

I made the tomb salt project on John Piper's website, but we baked it and it turned out fine. Any ideas??

I have put salt dough maps in the oven to hasten the drying time, and it worked fine. You are probably right that the humidity is causing your problem. In my case, I made mini salt dough maps for our co-op class, but made them too late to allow for drying time (a classic case of not reviewing/remembering the directions ahead of time). Basically, I turned the oven on the lowest setting and let it heat up with them in there. Then, I turned the oven off, but left the light on and let them sit overnight. I had them on foam board, so I was trying not to ignite anything. The next day, they were dry and ready to use.
Good luck with your drying..
Robin

My first salt dough in the Georgia humidity was awful. It actually started to disintegrate and mold before it ever came close to drying. It even had little pools of moisture on it some mornings.

In the humidity I learned that a HUGE help is spreading the dough very thinly. Think as thin as you can and still get dough coverage.
The thinnest layer works for the base, and make leetle beety mountains, if possible.

The next thing that helped was dying the dough with food coloring BEFORE we used it. Add coloring when you're making the dough, and then you create a map that either needs no painting (making drying a non-issue) or needs just a little painting. Then it didn't matter if it dried or not!

Now I'm in New England, no drying issues here!

Deanna

When we did salt dough maps in a small coop of three families, a lot depended on how thick the dough was spread. Some took over two weeks to air dry.

However, I did learn that you should add water to the dry ingredients slowly. Younger children may need a slightly wetter and softer mix but if your children aren't LG and smallish, I would mix the dough with less water next time. It will be more difficult to work with but it will dry quicker. It will also be less sticky.