MOON SAND....Almost!!

I've never bought the stuff for my kids!  We've played with it before ~ but always at someone elses house so the mess stays there!!  I love the way it feels - so soft and almost velvety; and how do they make it??

Well I was cruising blogs and discovered a recipe to make your own!  It called for play sand, corn flour, and water.  I have looked and looked for corn flour!  I live in the boondocks of Michigan sooooo I guess that is making it impossible to find it!  So then I checked out some other sites and their directions called for corn starch instead!  So that is what we went with!

The kids mixed together the sand and cornstarch - then I added the water - after seeing how it turned out I would have added the water a little at a time!  It ended up very wet or slimy!  Kind of like the original "oobleck"  - looks wet but felt dry to the touch!    Here's what it looked like!  I think because my bag of clean sand box sand was damp I didn't need as much water.



looks wet - but felt dry to the touch!



It didn't matter to my 2 youngest boys - who stayed at the table the whole outside time!  I put the small sand molds out with it - however we couldn't get the sand out!!!   


It was a huge fine motor and sensory experience for my *littles*!!!  Look at the concentration on the little guys face trying to work with the sand!!!

 

Great for working their little hand muscles!  As it dried I crumbled the chunks and it was more like the real "moon sand"!  We were able to put it in the molds then and have the shape hold!! 

When we were done I stored it in an ice cream bucket with a lid.  Then later in the day I remembered seeing on one of the sites that they added baby oil to their mixture to prevent the drying out.  I did this later on and it worked great!  It made the sand smell good too!  So all in all - we had a pretty good experience with this and will definately make it often!  But we will still only use it outside!!! (my floor OCD still gets the best of me!)   Maybe on rainy days we will put the kids picnic table on the covered front porch and use it there! 

here's how I made it:

6 cups of  clean sandbox sand
3 cups of corn starch

mix these 2 together very well

1 1/2 cups of water - add a little at a time to the mixture above until you reach the desired texture

baby oil 
squeeze into the mixture I just added until the mixture felt smooth and not dry

I still plan on trying to find corn flour and making it with that to compare to 2!  I'll let you know if I get a chance to make it!

Happy crafting!
Steph