Celebrating the festive season remotely with family
As the year ends, people of all faiths are preparing for a variety of festivals […]
Read moreMoon sand
What you need
Sand and a sand pit or large container to play with it in (if you don’t have any sand, you could use flour as an alternative), baby oil.
Benefits
A fun sensory experience that will encourage your child to explore and develop language as they talk about how the sand feels. Understanding of science will also be developed as your child observes and discusses change.
The experience
Provide your child with a small cup containing the baby oil and the container filled with sand or flour. Encourage them to explore the dry sand or flour first, discussing how it feels and what it looks like. Next encourage them to explore the oil by dipping in a finger and feeling the texture.
Encourage your child to add the oil to the sand, and ask them what they think may happen?! Ideally you will need to allow approx ¼ cup oil for every 2 cups of sand/flour, but it can be a fun experiment to gradually add and observe and see what happens.
Once added, this creates ‘moon sand’ – a fun, sensory, moldable material that your child will enjoy exploring over and over again! After play, if stored in an airtight container, this will last for several days.
This experience will likely be a little messy, so would be ideal an ideal activity to do outdoors, or on a floor surface that is easily wiped down.