Kids love digging, sifting, building, pouring, and exploring with sand. They love using their imaginations when given cars, trucks, people, and animals while playing in a sand box.
They strengthen their small and large muscle groups as they mold wet sand into creative designs and pour dry sand through a sieve or sifter or into a funnel that funnels into a specific container.
Provide kids with old cups, spoons, measuring cups, tea sets, shovels, pails, combs, shells, sticks, rocks, and rakes while playing with sand. I love Portable Sand Trays to use indoors or out any time of the year. Most children love the feeling of sand and using a sand table can provide hours of fun.
I love Kinetic Sand because it feels great and makes sculpting objects for kids easy. I prefer little sandboxes that can be used indoors or out to large outdoor sand boxes, (that cats like using for litter boxes), because they are easy to use and clean up.
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Nannies and au pairs should try the following games with sand with children:
Letter Practice
Encourage children to practice writing letters in the sand with a finger. When the sand area is covered with letters, have the kids smooth out the surface with a hand and start over. Expand the activity to practice writing numbers, words, and shapes in the sand. Have the kids write their names in the sand or draw a picture. Offer other implements, such as straws or pencils, for children to use when writing in the sand.
Sand Town
Use a large area of sand to create a sand town. Build mounds of sand to create hills in the town. Smooth out roads around the sand town. Add buildings using wet sand packed into a small bucket. Provide toy cars and plastic people. Encourage the kids to play in the sand town, using the cars to drive around and interacting with each other through plastic people figures. Scale down the sand town if only a small area of sand is available.
Sand Treasure Hunt
Hide several small objects in the sand play area. Select items that the chidlren can use in the sand after the treasure hunt is over, such as toy cars or seashells. Encourage the kids to dig through the sand to find the hidden objects. For a fun twist, create dinosaur bones from clay, allowing them to harden. Bury the dinosaur bones in the sand and send the kids on a dinosaur digging expedition.
Sand Patterns
Provide a variety of objects that the kids can use in the sand to create patterns. Ideas include feathers, combs, sticks, seashells and rocks. Have the kids press the objects into wet or dry sand. Encourage them to drag the items along in the sand to observe the resulting patterns.
Digging and Pouring
Gather household items to use with sand. Ideas include funnels, colanders, measuring cups and spoons. Let the kids experiment with these different objects and how the sand moves through them. Try this activity with both wet and dry sand, asking the kids to verbalize how the sand acted differently when the same items were used.
Here are some of the best sand products for nannies and au pairs to use with children:
Kinetic Sand is the original magical, moldable, and mesmerizing sand. Its unique formula makes Kinetic Sand stick together so it easily shapes and molds into anything you can imagine. Once the Kidd let Kinetic Sand flow through their hands, they won’t be able to put it down. Kinetic Sand never dries out, so the children can create again and again.
Sandtastik is a safe, non-toxic sand that contains no crystalline silica or quartz. Sandtastik Sand is 100% natural, environmentally friendly, safe for children of all ages and is available in over 73 colors. This sand is used for sand art projects and to play with like regular sand you find in an outdoor sandbox.
This Play Sand Kit makes a great gift. The amazing moldable clay sticks only to itself and lets children stack, build, stretch, and shape it in hundreds of fun and exciting ways. It comes with a variety of great toys they can use to make and re-make new environments, for boys and girls alike. Every set includes three bags of colorful play sand, sand tray, 10 dinosaur molds, four castle molds, three Trucks, seven Tools, and 12 accessories to create exciting adventures.
Keep sand off the floor. This kit with sand molds comes with an inflatable sand tray and air pump which allows you to set up your own playground anytime anywhere. Perfect for those cold winter days, or rainy days so kids can still play in the sandbox. It doubles as both play space and storage, keep all the sand together and no more messes on the floor, makes clean up is a breeze. When done playing, the inflatable sandbox transforms into a bag where you can carry all the sand molds and tools kit, and you can even play with it on-the-go!
This is a Sand Tray large enough for full play activities, yet light enough to move around. Can be used on the floor or tabletop. Spacious storage area will keep sand tools and play sets handy for daily use. The 2 1/4″ platform around the top helps keep the sand in and adds to the play value. Sand and sand tools sold separately. Recommend 15 lbs of sand for optimal use. 10 lbs of sand is bare minimum.
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