When you give your child sand, or any texture to play with, they are more than just touching the grainy texture. In fact, when you let your child freely explore sand, they also notice the color, the coolness, and the possibility. Their minds calm down at this moment, forgetting almost everything else that they wanted. It is busy spinning stories—stories that may not have all the words, but are brimming with imagination. Tell them the word beach, and their mind is already drawing a placid picture.Creative play and sensory exposure are essential to a child’s brain and motor skills development.
There are many benefits of free playtime for children, it helps them exert independence and self-regulation, it helps them calm down, breathe, and improves focus, it helps them think, imagine, and create. It helps them find confidence in themselves, too.
An easy sensory activity to maintain at home is a sandpit. A sandpit is something that your child can spend a lot of time exploring, it’s easier to maintain being a dry texture, and you can plan many indoor games and activities around it, when you want to keep the children inside from the heat.
The House of Zizi sandpit is just the thing you need for your children’s room. This 4x4-foot sandpit disguises itself as a study table, but open the lid and you can plan the best children’s play time around it.
And if you’re wondering how many times your child plays with the same sand before getting bored, here’s a list of creative activities that you can plan around a sandpit:
A good old dig-and-find
Children love to dig and play and this activity is a crowd pleaser. Give them a list of small objects that you’ve hidden in the sandpit, and they have to dig and find them all. The activity can be done in small groups of individually, where every child is timed according to how long it takes them to find everything on the list. Make sure the list if drawn instead of written if the children are not yet reading.
Sand-writing
Sand is a great texture to start introducing your toddler to pattern writing/drawing. You can start by introducing them to simple lines and shapes and gradually move on to letters and numbers. Sand also makes for a great canvas for little fingers, without it feeling burdensome or tiring.
Build a castle
It's an essential experience for children, and you don’t even have to wait to go to the beach. Build a sandcastle or a fort, and also cook up a story or two to go with it. Add some toys, and you’ve got yourself a great stage for some pretend play.
A Cooking face-off
Add some cookie-cutters, cups, and pans from your kitchen set to your sand pit, put on your chef’s hat, and have a cooking face-off. There’s so much you can make, pies, cakes, laddoos, and other imaginative treats.
Sand-tower challenge
Another fun challenge around sand could be building towers, where the tallest tower wins. Thiswould also be a great game to tell them all about how wet sand will hold better and staystronger.
Measuring and comparing
Sand can also be a great tool to introduce children to quantity and measurement. All you need is some scoops and some containers in various sizes and you can spend a lot of time filling up the various containers and comparing their volume.
Small world-play
Make a large hill with the sand with a flat top and your volcano is ready. Tell your child all about active and dormant volcanoes. Now all you need to make this volcano erupt is some baking soda and vinegar. This is such an enjoyable activity and children love the drama!
Sand volcano
Make a large hill with the sand with a flat top and your volcano is ready. Tell your child all about active and dormant volcanoes. Now all you need to make this volcano erupt is some baking soda and vinegar. This is such an enjoyable activity and children love the drama!
Ice and sand
You’ll need ice blocks, frozen ahead of time, for this one. Empty these frozen blocks on the sand and let children explore it, run it through the sand. The sand will stick to the sand and ensure it doesn’t melt away too quickly. Children will have fun watching the ice melt slowly, turning the
sand slushy and wet.
Be sure to try these! I realize that mess can be very disturbing as an adult, but trust me, it’s an important part of growing up. It is a great way to allow and even encourage your child’s natural curiosity and you can always remedy the mess by incorporating an end-of-day tidying uproutine.
Happy exploring!
Sand Pit by House of Zizi