Making Moon Sand

I once read that to be a good teacher, you must be a good plagiarizer. If that's true, then I'm an awesome teacher! haha

Ever since I saw this easy moon sand recipe over at Irresistible Ideas for play based learning, I knew I HAD to try it.

The official recipe is:

4 cups of craft sand

2 cups of corn starch

1 cup of water

However, I found that even 1 cup of water is too much. Just add the water a little at a time. If you add too much water, the consistency is like that of oobleck, only gritty. It still works great as a sensory experience, but true moon sand should be mold-able and crumbly.

The day before, we mixed up a batch of moon sand together as a class. I forgot my camera that day, so I saved some ingredients to be added to the batch. Here you see Giovanni pouring in the craft sand. I like using colored sand, but if you use white, you can add color with liquid water color.

The texture of the sand is so soft and fine. I love to use it by itself for art and "sand writing." But today, we're using the last of our batch.

We used the last of our cornstarch, too. The day before, we measured the ingredients, but it's not really necessary. You'll want more sand than cornstarch, and more cornstarch than water.

Mixing the dry ingredients.

Here you see him adding just about a 1/4 a cup of water.

If it gets hard, you have too much cornstarch. Add more sand to remedy. If it's too crumbly, add a little more water.

Ours came out perfect.

When you squeeze it, it should mold without sticking too much to your hand.

When you press it, it should crumble like sand.

A long time ago, I purchased an expensive moon sand set. The moon sand lasted only a week or so, but I kept the toys. I could never afford to buy more moon sand, but this recipe was cheap and easy!

He fills up the boulder with sand, then places a surprise.

He buries the treasure, and fills the boulder all the way to the top...

...pats it down...

...clears a space...

...turns it over...

...and voila! I perfectly sculpted boulder!

Then he breaks it up.

And finds dinosaur fossils!

I saw that Amy over Child Central Station uses baby oil instead of water. Next time, I'm definitely trying that out!

This activity is good for:

• Building Small Motor Skills: the small muscles in the hand are used for buttoning a shirt, tying a shoe, and writing with a pencil. Any time you can squeeze, roll, and crumble something, you are doing pre-writing!
• Science/ Inquiry: The children were apart of every step of making the moon sand. They helped me get the supplies, measure the ingredients, pour them, mix them, test it, and figure out what else we needed. Next time, I would like to just put the ingredients out, along with some bottles of baby oil, and see what they do! That is true inquiry. 
• Problem Solving: Many kids thought it would act like play dough. They tried using traditional play dough cutters with the moon sand, but found it to crumble instead of cut into neat lines. This presented a problem...how could they make the shapes they wanted without cutting.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did!

Happy playing!

Linked up to

The Sand Mountain

We have a HUGE outdoor playground. It has an "L" shape, with one half being used by the 4's and 5's classes, and the other being used by the 1's, 2's, and 3's. Our sandbox is right in the middle.

Lately, our sandbox has been getting kind of low.

My directors scheduled for a fresh new load of sand to be delivered this week. Luckily, it happened to be when my class was on the play ground. They knew the sand truck was coming, so we picked a spot to watch (out of harms way, but still close enough to see everything.

We watched him back into the playground, all the way to the very edge of the sandbox (cracking the sidewalk in the process), and dump a large mound of sand.

It was all very exciting. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the sand being dumped, but I had my wits about me when the sand truck left, and the kids got to work on the "mountain," as they called it.

EVERYONE joined in.

The kids experiment with different ways to go down the mountain.

 Jumping.

Running. And if you look in the background, you'll see Braeden preparing to get a running start to go up the mountain.

Sliding.

And rolling!

Shoes came off, and feet disappeared into the sand.

It was a hot, Arizona day, so I'm sure the sand felt nice and cool all around her legs.

I tried walking on the mountain too, but I was quickly told, "Ms. Gina, please get off our mountain!"

Teachers have no fun!

Right after this, we went inside for lunch and nap. During nap time, two teachers leveled out the sand, and returned the sand toys to the sandbox. It turns out, we were the only class that got to play on the mountain. :)

This activity:

• Helped build strong muscles: It took a lot of effort to climb a mountain in which your feet sink into. I saw many children digging, burying, jumping, running, and rolling...experimenting with what their little bodies could do! 
• Encouraged Cooperative Play: Lots of little bodies in a small space requires some negotiating. When over-eager boys accidentally jumped on a friend, or rolled over another person, there was some apologizing done. This was a great lesson in personal boundaries and manners (once they figured out they were hurting others, they remembered to say "excuse me" before entering someone's space, and to ask before jumping on others: "Can I jump over you?")

Happy playing!