Messy Play: Moon Sand
We love messy play and when I recently heard about moon sand, I immediately looked it up online. Moon dough, moon sand, cloud dough; there are many different names for it. Personally, I think moon sand is the best fit.
I have a large cement mixing tray (aka tuff spot tray) that I use for all of our messy play activities. It saves the carpet from becoming a complete disaster zone and helps to minimise some of the mess created.
Moon sand is really easy to make and it’s also really easy to clean up afterwards.
All you need is some plain flour and baby oil.
You can either mix the flour and baby oil together in a bowl or tupperware container beforehand or just do what I did and pour the flour onto your tray and then add baby oil.
I decided to do it this way so that our twins could play with the flour as well.
They picked it up, rubbed it, smelt it and I asked them if it was hot or cold, soft or hard and what it felt like under their feet when they stood on it.
It’s a great, fun, sensory way of learning about different textures.
I then poured on some baby oil and used my hands to mix it in with the flour. I gave R and M a spoon each so they could join in too.
I was actually quite surprised by how less messy this activity is than I thought it would be. The flour soaks up the baby oil pretty quickly and although you do have to add quite a bit of baby oil it quickly turned into a sand like texture.
I grabbed some small pots from our kitchen and encouraged R and M to fill the pots up with the sandy mixture. We then turned the full pots upside down, patted the base, then lifted the pots up to create little sand castles.
R and M thought it was great!
When it comes to messy play, R and M play in very different ways.
R hates it when M has food or anything else for that matter on her face, but she’s not too bothered if she gets food on her own face.
When we first made the moon sand, R was a little hesitant to touch it, but when she saw me and M playing with it, she started to really enjoy it. R sat in the same spot and enjoyed putting the sand into the pots and then emptying them out again.
M, on the other hand was really funny. She stood up and threw the sand in the air so it was all in her hair! Then she would lie down and create sand angels rolling herself around in the sand!
This was a really fun activity to do and one that I will definitely be doing again!
Have you made moon sand or similar? Did your child enjoy it?
5 Comments
seychellesmama
March 5, 2014 at 10:26 am
This looks like lots of fun!! Great pictures too! I'm really looking forward to doing this kind of thing with Arthur 🙂
Jo Laybourn
March 5, 2014 at 10:50 am
They look like they has great fun Emily! Love the photo's! x #MMWBlogHop
Californian Mum in London
March 5, 2014 at 1:48 pm
I've never done this as I am afraid of mess, but this looks really fun. I think my 21-month old would love it. #mwbh
Kathryn Grant
March 5, 2014 at 4:30 pm
This is the 2nd blog I've read today on this wonder stuff… Going to have to try it out! #MMWBH
Morgan Prince
March 6, 2014 at 2:56 pm
This looks like loads of fun for the little ones! I never did it with my boys and I think they would find it a bit boring now, never mind. #MMWBH