15 Ways to Play in the Sand with your Kids

There is something inspiring and undefinable that makes sand such an amazing medium for kids to explore, learn, and play in. We have a place where the kids play with sand. It is my special place to go when we have all had enough.

There is so many things we can do with sand. Here are just a few that we have tried:

1. Touch
Let the baby touch the sand and feel how grainy it is. Let her see if fall through her fingers.

2. Dig
Let the boys just dig holes in the sand. I dont know why or what causes this amazing phenomena, but they will actually dig a hole for hours. (If they didnt bicker here and there, and if the baby didnt need love and attention often, I might get a free moment to clear my head.)

3. Play pirate
Let me roam around or run around the sand area and make believe they are looking for treasure. Or burying treasure. You can even bring out the paper and crayons to draw the map and hide and bury the map as well.

4. Play Olympic volleyball player. 
We loved to watch the Olympics. We can watch a youtube video of our team

5. Play Dora or Diego. 
We can make believe we are rescuers and there is an animal that is hurt that we need to rescue in the desert. Ideally, we would bring our doctor kit and a designated sand stuffed animal that we would find and take care of, but currently we just use our imaginations.

6. Play farmer. 
Take sticks or leaves and "plant" then in a row to make believe they have grown in your garden. They we harvest our vegetables into our wagon or buckets.

7.Build a sandcastle. 
This works best when at the beach where the ocean wets the sand to the right consistency to stick together. When at a play park, this may not be the best option, but after a rain it is lots of fun to use every shape and every size bucket to help build their castle.

8. Play construction
What boy does not own a toy bulldozer, front loader, or dump truck. This is THE PLACE to put them to work. Ideally, you would not want to bring toys into the sandbox and into your home, but if you can designate a "sand box" toy, this is where they can build their city. Boys will gravitate to just destroy, but I try to promote the amazing thing of destroying old buildings to build new ones. (and keep a few old ones to remember "history")

9. Play world explorer
We draw the shapes of the continents and pretend to travel to other parts of the world. We have books that we read, but sometimes it all comes together when they can physically move and pretend in a new way.


10. Sand Art
Take a little bit of sand home and paint on glue and sift sand to let their drawings come to life.

11. Experiment with different size funnels
See how fast each funnel can fill a bucket with sand. Let the siblings pick a funnel and race to see who can fill the buckts the fastest.  This will most likely work once. After one time of racing, they will identify which is the fastest funnel, but it is fun to see them test, observe and remember what they see.

12. Water wheel power
Talk about how fascinating a water wheel is and show previewed youtube video to get the concept. They let them try out a water wheel with sand.

13. Write in the sand
We write our names in the sand with a shovel. Or create a mound of sand to create letters for our 3 year old. In either case, sometimes it seems much more interesting to them to learn than with paper and pencils/markers/crayons/paint/etc.

14. Play tic-tac-toe
This seems to be a game that just became fun at the age of 4 and 1/2 years.  We play on paper in restaurants, but being able to play an extra large game and sometimes step on each others Xs or Os proves to be much more fun and silly.


15. Just play. 
Sometimes, I just enjoy letting the kids teach me what they want to do. Let them create the game and the way they want to play the game. Or most times, I just let them play no particular game at all. No rules (outside of no throwing sand) and I just watch and learn.