Toddler Activity- Homemade "Moon" Sand

I bribed my kid to take a nap. Yea, you read that right… I bribed my daughter to take her nap this afternoon. I try to be a good mom, not a perfect one. She skipped her nap yesterday and mommy really needed her to take a nap today. She is 2, but still really needs at least an hour in the afternoons. She is very active and if she does not have that nap… well, let’s just say no one is having fun come 6:30 or so.

Anyhow, I bribed her to take a nap this afternoon and told her that if she would lay down and take her nap that “mommy would make her something special while she was sleeping.” Her response was “Cookies?” I told her “No, not cookies, but if you want to make cookies, we can do that tonight. But, while you are sleeping this afternoon, mommy will make you something special to play with. Some special sand, sand like you find at the beach, that you can make sand castles with.” That was plenty enough to appease her and she let me tuck her in an off to dreamland she went today. None of the battle that we had yesterday. Yesterday wore us both out.

Anyhow, I have had this “recipe” for homemade “moon” sand for about a year or so and I honestly have no idea where I found it, so I do not know who to give proper credit to… but I thought I would share my pictures from making it this afternoon and the recipe.

Homemade “Moon” Sand

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups water

3 cups corn starch

6 cups sand

I put my sand in a large bowl and since it was sandbox quality, I made sure there weren’t any little rocks, etc.

Then I added in the corn starch.

Stirred the two together with a fork to make sure the mixture was smooth and that there weren’t any lumps.

Then I added in the water. I actually wound up using a little more than the 1 1/2 cups that my recipe that I had jotted down had called for. The mixture is a little stiff, so I just dumped it all into a storage bin and mixed it with my hands. I had bought this bin to keep the sand in and that way we can play inside on rainy days with the new “moon” sand.

Tips:

The recipe I had said you should mix the corn starch and water then add it to the sand… I did not do it this way simple because I know how thick corn starch can get in a matter of minutes and it can be almost impossible to stir if you don’t move quickly, especially with that large amount of corn starch to small amount of water.

Also, you can add food coloring to this if you want… I didn’t we like plain old sand. I don’t think food coloring would work that great and personally if you want to make a color version I would suggest that colorful play sand you can get at Wal-Mart, etc.

You should store the mixture in an air tight container and then when you bring it out to use it just sprinkle it with a little water to reactivate if it has dried out a bit.

This mixture doesn’t make the most beautiful sand castles, but it will definitely help us achieve our goal of a fun sensory activity. We will just squeeze and squish it, bury things in it, make hand prints & other shapes and of course our sand castle lumps.

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Toddler Activity- Homemade "Moon" Sand