Silly Sand

I'm quite sure someone somewhere has discovered this before but we came across this quite by chance.  We had a sensory week at nursery last week and we had, of course, made gloop as part of this.  The children and I wondered what would happen if we added sand to the mixture.  The result is what they called 'Silly Sand.'

We mixed up some at home using about 1 1/2 cup fulls of play sand, 3/4 cup cornflour, some green food colouring and a little water.

It makes a kind of mold-able sand which is somewhere between gloop and play dough.  It can be squished and squeezed and relaxes a little but doesn't go totally runny like gloop.  When more water is added it becomes more gloopy and runny.  We used it for some creative play in the garden.

Kitchen equipment supported the creativity.  I think anything you use with play dough - especially moulds would work well.

Cake making.  Boy went on to make a 'tower cake, like a wedding cake.'

You can see the silly sand oozing a little from the cake moulds.  It really is great tactile, sensory stuff and both my own children and the children at nursery enjoyed it.  At nursery we used ice cube trays to make little cubes of silly sand and some children used them as bricks to construct things.  I guess this is similar to the commercially sold 'Moon Sand' but I think it has a more oozy nature than that.