The diary of Dad

Just a couple of weeks ago we were loving life on holiday in Spain where my three year old son, Robbie, fell in love with the beach.

Luckily for us, we returned back to good ’ole England just in time for a heatwave and he has been able to swap the Spanish water for his own mini outdoor pool for the last few days. One thing was still missing though, Robbie wanted a little bit of sand to play with so we set about making our own colourful moon sand.

Simple homemade moon sand

The recipe for moon sand is incredibly simple and requires just three ingredients which you are likely to already have in your cupboard. Preparation is also really easy, meaning your child can help and this ensures making the sand is almost as fun as the result!

Here’s everything you will need to make your own colourful moonsand:

• Flour
• Oil
• Food colouring
• A mixing bowl

To create a small amount of sand suitable for one child to play with, simply put eight tablespoons of flour into the bowl. Add one tablespoon of oil along with the as much colouring as you desire, the more you add the brighter the sand will be.

The joy of this recipe for kids is that you really can not go wrong. If the mix seems too dry, add a little more oil. If it’s too damp, add more flour. Simple. It’s also nice to know that the ingredients are all edible, though unlikely to taste too good!

If you are looking to create a larger amount of moon sand, all you need to do is to follow the scale of the recipe. So long as there are eight spoons of flour to every one of oil the mix will be a sucess.

Top Tip for making moon sand

Ok so maybe this is a little bit of a cheat but since we live by the seaside it makes sense to take advantage. If you want your mix to be even ’sandier,’ head to the beach and grab some real sand. Add this to the mix before adding colouring in order that it blends in and you can really create far more and much grainier moon sand.

Why make homemade moon sand?

Aside from being a simple and fun activity making the sand itself, there are plenty of fun games to play with it. Moon sand can be used as a sensory activity for babies and small toddlers whilst preschool and young children may find their fine motor skills and hand eye coordination both benefit from play with moon sand.

The possibilities for games using home made moon sand are endless. Robbie is absolutely obsessed with cars so, as usual, all of our play had to involve vehicles!

At first we were happy just hiding toy cars in the sand for Robbie to dig out but he soon move on to to colour matching all of his cars to the different sands that we had made.

We then used the sand as a form of play dough and built a few castles as well as moulding it into different shapes and vehicles, obviously. If you own a few shape cutters, they will work perfectly with the moon sand too.

A batch of moon sand will generally last around a month if kept properly in a sealed contained. It can of course be quite a messy experience so if it starts to look a little off colour or dry then it may be time to discard it and make a new batch.