Saturday, July 25, 2009

Art Time - Summertime Sand Art


This project is a lot of fun. We did this same thing last fall... inside. What a mistake that was. I'm ok about some messiness, but that took messiness to a whole new level. Anyway, I wanted to do it again, and this time we took it all outside. That's really where sand belongs anyway, isn't it?

Please excuse my messy patio. How is it I never see what needs to be done until I've taken pictures of it?


We bought our colored sand at Michaels, but I believe you can color your own sand with food coloring and let it dry, if you are inclined to do so. (If you are, I'm in awe of you.)


We bought little salt and pepper shakers at the dollar store. I filled them up with the different colors of sand using a funnel, then stuffed 2 to 3 cotton balls in at the top to keep the sand from spilling out. M wanted red and blue construction paper, so that's what we used. Here's the set up:

Actually, the picture doesn't show it, but we ended up putting the paper in a shallow pan to catch the extra sand. The rocks are to hold it down.


Give your child the glue bottle. Chances are they'll know exactly what to do from there (sorry the picture is blurry).

Shake the sand onto the paper:

It looks pretty just like that, doesn't it?


Shake the sand off, and let your masterpiece dry. It's fun and the clean up was pretty easy - take the extra sand to the sandbox and dump it in.:) M loved doing this and it was the first thing he showed to Daddy when Daddy came home.


While M was doing this I made some sand letter cards to use when we are learning letters. M has been asking me to help him write letters, and I thought tracing these with his fingers would be a good way to start learning how they are shaped. Montessori teachers have sandpaper letters that they use for this. These are no where near the same quality, but hopefully will be helpful anyway!

Have a beautiful day! :)

3 comments:

  1. Great idea! I will have to do this with my son. So were the cotton balls just to keep the sand from coming out before he started on the project?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Rebecca,
    Yep, the cotton balls were just there to prevent a mess before "the mess". :) I was carrying everything outside on a tray and didn't want it to spill. Thanks for stopping by!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, this is one of the projects on my "to do before Anna is in college" lists :) I am so with you on taking such an activity outside. It turned out perfect though!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment; I love reading them! If you ask a question and don't receive a personal reply, check back here for the answer. Often I reply via comment to something that might be of interest to others.

ShareThis

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...