Moon Sand

A few weeks ago we made some Moon Sand to play with outside on the Tuff Tray (aka the cheap builder’s mixing tray). So, what is Moon Sand? It’s basically a combination of flour and oil, which gives a crumbly texture, but can also be compressed and moulded.

 The “recipe” couldn’t be easier. It’s just 8 parts flour and 1 part oil. I know that flour is tough to get hold of at the moment, but we had half a bag of weevil filled stuff that was well past it’s best in the back of a cupboard, so making Moon Sand was preferable to binning it. You could use any oil, such as olive oil or baby oil, but we just used vegetable oil as, again, that’s what’s we had in the cupboard.

We made a reasonably small amount, 4 cups of flour and half a cup of oil, but it was plenty for us to be going with. My children (aged 5 and 3) played with it for ages making up various games, stories and scenarios. Their favourite was for one of them to bury small plastic dinosaurs and animals, and the other had to uncover them. My son enjoyed the game but didn’t love the plastic toys getting dirty so we set up a washing station. We had a bucket of water to wash the toys, and they were then put on a tea towel in the sun to dry...before being buried again!

You could add extra sensory elements by adding colour (just add a drop or two of food colouring) or scent (some essential oils should do the trick) to your mixture. You could even mix in glitter or sequins for some sparkly, magical, play

If you’d like some more ideas of Tuff Tray activities take a look at this post. Have fun!