Yesterday was such a miserable day - cold and it poured down all day long. There was no chance of getting outside for any playing, and it was one of those days when you just feel like you can't be bothered to put much energy into anything. Luckily, I remembered I had the moon sand from a previous play session in the summer stored in the cupboard.The recipe I used to make the moon sand was simply:
- 8 cups plain flour
- 1 cup baby oil
I wanted to make it look a bit more appealing than the simple sand colour, but wasn't sure how easy it would be to add color to it now that it has been fully made. Instead, I simply poured a pile of silver glitter over the top and left it for Isabelle to mix in. It gave it a little 'edge' that it didn't have before and I thought it looked much better than the plain sand, and I was delighted to find that it still had the lemon and tea tree smell that it had the first time round. I popped it into our tray, and put the tray on a foam square in a (failed) attempt to limit the mess.
Last time, Isabelle played with the moon sand for ages, and Simon and I joined in, so
I knew she would enjoy it again. She loves to scoop, and spent the first part of the play session scooping the sand from one place to the next. I gave her a normal spoon, two measuring cups and some rakes and a spade from her sand pit.
Simon was busy making shapes out of the sand, and she moved on to destroying those, which was her favorite thing to do. We added in a small bucket, 2 sand moulds and a tupperware box, and she was able to help us fill them to make different structures, before she did her Godzilla routine and destroyed them all. She loved picking up clumps of the moon sand and crushing it and crumbling it in her hands, and played for around half an hour alternating between crushing and scooping.
At the end, the moon sand went back into its bag ready for another rainy day. That said, I think a coloured batch is in the not too distant future. I think, considering how hard it was to contain the moon sand, a Tuff Spot may also be in the not too distant future!
