Moon Sand Discovery

We've been wanting to make Moon Sand for a while and we finally did.  Making Moon Sand is a great way to rediscover your play sand.

To create Moon Sand you'll need:

6 cups of Play Sand

3 cups of cornstarch (or corn flour)

1 1/2 cups of cold water

We mixed all the ingredients in a big plastic tub.  We added a little more water and each day it was played with it more water was added.  It was fun to make.

It was fun to add plastic creatures and rocks to the Moon Sand.  It had a nice texture that my daughter enjoyed.  A great new sensory experience.

Moon sand formed into little rock shapes very easily.  I think it is called "Moon Sand" because of this quality.  We will need to get some toy aliens, astronauts, and space ships to add to the fun.

It is always enjoyable to make something new with things you already have on hand.  Moon Sand is definitely one of those experiences.  Hope you have fun making Moon Sand!

Making Colorful Clean Mud

Have you ever played with Clean Mud? I've always wanted to make Clean Mud (can't believe I didn't do this until now!) and finally did with the neighborhood kids and my daughter. They all loved it.  It was such a fun process and great sensory experience.  It also contains simple materials I think you'll have right at home: Ivory Soap + Toilet Paper + Water.  I got the recipe here at earthkids.com.  Keep reading to find out the details of this super cool sensory play experience.

To create Clean Mud you'll need:

3 Bars of Ivory Soap 

1 to 2 rolls of toilet paper

Hot water (not  scalding)

Liquid Watercolors or Food Colors

large bowl or container

To make the Clean Mud, first you grate the Ivory Soap. They all wanted to help with this step. Then you can start tearing up the toilet paper.

We were kind of grating and putting the toilet paper in at the same time to keep everyone busy.  After adding the toilet paper and grated Ivory soap, we added the water little by little.  The instructions said it should feel like Whipped Topping. I thought it was much squishier and thicker than that.

 Next, start combining it all together.  Here is my daughter and her friend squishing it all together. They just loved this part.

They kept squishing it back and forth.  Lot of smiles and giggling!

Back and forth. So fun!

The cool thing about Clean Mud is that it is very moldable too.  Here is a "Clean Mud Mountain"!

Also, it is quite fun to poke with fingertips.  We didn't even add any tools or containers....they had so much fun just playing without other materials

 

They all suggested mixing color into it and I thought that was brilliant idea! I put liquid watercolor (you could use food color)  and Clean Mud in individual plastic bags so they could all mix their own color. This reminded me of our Paint Mixing In Bags.  Since the Clean Mud was in bags they could take it home to show their parents.....yay!

With the rest of the Clean Mud we added a bunch of colors.

This is my Heart Creation that I made. It kind of gave a rainbow effect! I liked molding the Mud into things because I always want to make everything into a sculpture.  Either way it was a successful sensory play experience and I sure hope you give it a try. Let me know if you try it.

More Clean Mud Inspiration:

Sparkle Soap Mud from The Imagination Tree

Clean Mud via the Microwave from Child Central Station

Clean Mud Experience for Young Children from
Let The Children Play

Clean Mud Sculptures from Craftberry Bush

Clean Mud is a fun (and messy) art project from
The Artful Parent

Wet Chalk Fun: Making Hand and Foot Prints

Have you ever used chalk and water together? Just dip some chalk in water and it makes the colors so vibrant and smooth.  My daughter spent a whole hour or so playing with this idea.  Then we realized you could make hand and foot prints too.  Keep reading to find out how.

To create Chalk hand and foot prints:

First draw a huge rainbow chalk picture and add some water.

Then add some water and put your hands in....

Now print your hands.

Next put your feet in...

Then print those...

Add more colored chalk and water. Have fun coloring, drawing, and making prints with chalk. 

Then have fun washing it all away with the hose!

What kinds of fun have you had with chalk?

More chalk Fun:

DIY Crushed Chalk Paint

Experiment: Growing And Shrinking Water Beads

Water Beads are truly Amazing!  We've played with them and used them for sensory experiences,  but this time we really observed up close the most amazing part of water beads: how they start so small and grow so big in just 4 hours! Here is our documentation:

Observing Growing Water Beads:

Starting out very tiny.

Then growing right before our very eyes.....within minutes.

Look at how lumpy they look as they are  growing or (absorbing water). 

More growth.

Here you can see the so tiny to full size water beads! 

On average they grow to about the size of marbles as you can see,

Now Observing Shrinking Water Beads:

We placed the water beads on some layers of paper towels here so they could begin shrinking faster. They shrink much faster when  you have them separated too.  If you keep them in a bin together the shrinking process is much slower.  Also, you might notice the "real marble" placed in the lower right corner.  We used that as a comparison to see how much they were shrinking.

Some of the water beads we isolated along with a "real marble" to see how much faster they would shrink with less moisture from other water beads around.

One surprise we found along the way was a "tear drop shaped" water bead!!!! How cool is that????

We observed shrinking each day. This is after 2 days or so.

Here is showing comparison with a marble up close.

2 more days go by.

A little more shrinking 2 days later.  It may depend on the temperature outside or in your house of how fast they shrink too.

A noticeable difference with 2 more days.  Some of the water beads were back to their original size. The water beads isolated in separate containers shrank much faster.

A lot of readers will ask, "Do water beads shrink back to their original size?" As you can see,  they do.
Much slower if they are stored together in a bag or container.

We enjoyed this week long experiment. Hope you have tried water beads and just maybe this post may spark your interest.  Check out our other post on Water Beads:  Water Bead Fun!

***Note: Water Beads Should Not Be Ingested!***

Have You Gotten On The Water Bead Bandwagon? 

Please Share Your Ideas!

Where you can buy Water beads: WalMart, JoAnn Fabrics, and Amazon.com:

Playing and Building With Plastic Cups

There is no need to buy expensive toys....my daughter finds joy in the simplest things.... plastic cups !  We began building with plastic cups about 2 years ago and it has always been a huge hit! Even friends that come over have played with these cups.  I have found them being built with, colored on, jumped over, filled with water, used as cones for riding around, and more!  These cups have probably gotten more use than any other disposable cup!  Here are some cup sculptures filling our whole living room!

More building with cups... you can see we have a great number of cups to play with....maybe that is the secret to why they are played with?

Then one day when we were stuffing our Paper Bag Puffy Hearts with poly-fil stuffing,  I noticed C was inventing her own play with these cups.  She was filling them with toys, yarn, and poly-fil!  This is what happens when you let kids play!!!  I did not tell her to do this at all!

Look at all that is going on here!  What do you think my daughter was creating???  Like I said,  "There is no need for expensive toys!" I guess we need to buy some more cups!!!

I know we'll be creating more with cups in the future!

Have your children been playing with cups? or anything else out of the ordinary?

*****

More Inspiration:

Maybe my daughter is on to something! Look as this beautiful Butterfly Sculpture made out of Disposable cups from EcoFriend.

And look at this Cup Sculpture made by artist Tara Donovan from The Boston Phoenix. Just Beautiful!

Now I'm really inspired to create some cup sculptures...

Baking Soda and Vinegar Fun!

We did this quite some time ago and now I finally had inspiration to post!  Hands on as we grow and  The Imagination Tree are having a 30 days to Hands on Play Challenge and Day 10 happens to be Mixing Concoctions.  This post goes perfectly with their challenge!  I hope all of you have tried mixing together baking soda and vinegar with your children!  It is such a Fabulous experience and I don't think anyone tires of this!  Please try it if you never have!  We did a little of this on our Pretend Potions post too!

First we put a bunch of baking soda in a pan and used an eyedropper to place vinegar and food color to see what happened.

A little bubbling.  Beautiful....creating little craters.

Then the biggest impact was putting the baking soda into the colored vinegar! This is always the most exciting part of this activity!

We tried to get all of them bubbling at the same time!

This led to at least an hour of FUN! Really!?  Inexpensive FUN and mostly everyone has these ingredients in their pantry!

We will be doing this again....because we've done it so many more times before!!!

Be sure to join in on 30 days to Hands on Play!!!
Check out other great ideas to get you playing with your kids!

The play goes till the end of November!