Last week, we were reading the story of Moses in The Jesus Storybook Bible, and Aurora thought it would be awfully fun to live in the desert. “It’s like a giant sand box, mom!” she exclaimed. When the Israelites crossed the red sea, she was sold, lake front property surrounded by a beach! Her idea of Heaven on Earth!
I had been holding on to a new Safari Toob, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to break it out. We made up a double batch of sand dough together, and some bricks for building pyramids out of modeling clay. They thought this Biblically inspired sensory bin was pretty awesome… probably because they didn’t live in the actual Biblical time and have to build those stinkin’ pyramids for real!
Here’s the recipe to make your own batch of sand dough if you want to play along! This stuff was great, not very messy, moldable, yet it still very much feels like real sand! Next time, I would add a little salt or Borax to it though so that it keeps longer. As it is, it’s really only good for a day or so before it gets gross.
Sand Dough
- 2 cups of flour
- 3/4 cups of water
- 3 cups of sand
- 1 tablespoon of glue
- paint or food coloring if desired
Pyramid building was fun, but short lived, as soon as she accomplished the objective, the pyramid became a house for the kitty, and then the house had to be deconstructed so that she could mold a tree. Eventually she got around to making the kitty a new, much smaller, little bed.
Gray just wanted to zoom the figures through the “ick ick” as he called the sand, he alternated between vroom sounds and making “yuk” noises!
The dough works great for building hills and molding, but is too soft to retain much shape. It’s not sculptable like play dough, but it makes a nice base material for sticking figures in to it so they stand up or creating hills and other interesting topography.
Here’s the cat bed she made, I believe the pharaoh there is her owner and she’s tucking her in for the night. Sleep tight kitty. 馃檪
