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Home Made Moon Sand Recipe

June 29, 2013 by Anna Ranson

Make some home made moon sand with this easy recipe for a wonderful sensory play experience for kids! Using just 3 simple ingredients, it can be formed and moulded, used to make impressions and cut out shapes and makes the best sand castles ever! Even better is that it’s gluten free so all can play.Homemade Moon Sand Recipe Sensory Play

We are big fans of sensory play and like to try as many different homemade recipes as we can! I’m always surprised at how easy they are and typically they use just a few everyday ingredients. I’ve had home made moon sand book-marked as a recipe idea for a long time ever since I first saw it on one of my all-time favourite blogs, Irresistible Ideas for Play-Based Learning (how can you resist checking out a blog with a name like that?!)

We have used commercially produced Moon Sand once and were not that impressed as it seemed to get everywhere and was a nightmare to clean up. This recipe however, turned out much more like the fun Cloud Dough recipe we have used lots of times and makes similarly awesome sand castles and moulded shapes! We decided to add some colour and glitter to ours to add a little more  ZING  and it turned out beautifully!

Mixing colour into home made moon sandHome made coloured moon sand recipe:

  • 4 cups play sand
  • 2 cup corn flour (corn starch in US)
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 tbsp coloured powder paint (we divided our plain mix into two so we could make both pink and purple)
  • huge sprinkling of glitter

DIY Moon Sand RecipeMethod:

  • Mix the sand and cornflour in a large bowl until combined. Then tip in the water in increments, mixing it in as you go along. By the end it should be well combined and the consistency is like a crumbly pastry mix. If it doesn’t hold together when formed in a ball then add a tiny bit more water until it feels right. It should not be wet, but feel slightly damp.
  • When this is achieved then stir through the colours, using as many as you like. You will need to use your fingers to thoroughly mix the colours, like making breadcrumbs or pastry. This stage is fantastic for developing fine motor skills!

Homemade Moon Sand Recipe

Next step is to PLAY! (always the best bit of course!) We tipped it into our sensory play table which we use for all things messy outside.


Then we added small scoops, spades, sand moulds, buckets and any loose materials they chose for decorations.Playing with homemade moon sand They made a volcano and poked a hole inside for pretend explosions. This would be fantastic to add some bicarb and vinegar inside to make pretend eruptions with, maybe we will do this next time we use it.Sculpting diy moon sand Baby played happily too, filling and emptying containers and using the sand moulds with a little help. She, of course, loved to destroy and knock down the structures best of all. After all, that’s her job as a baby!DIY moon sand activity They even found they could cut shapes from it using cookie cutters, although they didn’t transfer too well when picked up and moved. The remaining negative spaces were beautiful however!

The powder paint didn’t colour their hands too badly, only Pop’s who dipped hers directly into the powder paint, but it washed straight off anyway, more easily than regular paint. The moon sand was left out in our table with the lid on and dried out to a sand like consistency after 2 days. We will either add water again to revive it or mix it into our regular sand pit for a colourful addition!

Homemade Moon dust

 

 

What they are learning while they play:

 

creativity: inventing games and stories with sensory materials, creating sculptures and forms, exploring patterns and spaces using tools

 

knowledge and understanding/ science: combining ingredients to create new materials, mixing colours

maths: counting out cup fulls and following recipes

Cakie: 4.9

Pop: 3.3

Bean: 16 months

Search our archives for all our other Play Recipes too! There are dozens to try!

 

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Filed Under: Activities, Age, Colour Mixing, Create, Creativity, Homemade, How To, Make, Messy Play, Outdoor, Play, Play Recipes, Playdough, Preschooler, Recipes, Sand, School Age, Sensory, Sensory Table, Toddler, Uncategorized Tagged With: DIY, Homemade, Play Recipe, Sensory Play

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Comments

  1. Kat says

    June 29, 2013 at 1:41 pm

    Beautiful!!

  2. Rachel Davison says

    June 29, 2013 at 1:45 pm

    Love! I can’t wait to try this. We LOVE moon sand, but a cheaper and colorful version?! How exciting!!

  3. Leela says

    June 29, 2013 at 2:00 pm

    What is play sand? Is it regular sand from the beach?

    • Lauren says

      August 1, 2013 at 9:32 am

      I suppose but I think play sand is moist and stays moist! But I think it is just play sand but all the other ingredients is for coloring except for the water and corn flour

    • Sue Davies says

      November 17, 2013 at 1:10 am

      You can buy play sand at early learning centres, Asda, Tesco etc but may not be stocked over winter. It’s a clean and hygienic alternative to beach sand, which could contain all manner of nasty stuff! Hope that helps!
      L

  4. Joanne says

    June 29, 2013 at 2:03 pm

    What powdered paint do you recommend?

  5. Sarah R says

    June 29, 2013 at 2:41 pm

    Play sand is sand for use with children usually available in toy shops like toys r us, early learning centre etc. Fab activity will be making some at work next week with the kids i think! 🙂 we’ve made moon sand before but didn’t think to add powder paint, we have tub fulls of the stuff!

  6. Rebecca says

    June 29, 2013 at 2:47 pm

    Do you need new sand straight out the bag or can you just grab it out the sand pit?

  7. Ruth says

    July 2, 2013 at 7:39 am

    Hi, can you use brusho to colour the sand and mix it in the water first?

  8. Angela @outnumbered.be says

    July 2, 2013 at 8:01 am

    Rebecca, I guess you can do with any sand… And if no sand available i guess flour might also do the trick.

  9. Rebecca says

    July 13, 2013 at 10:23 am

    Thanks xx

  10. Rebecca says

    July 13, 2013 at 10:24 am

    Thanks Angela xx

  11. Chris Eastvedt says

    August 5, 2013 at 7:15 pm

    This looks great: it’s somewhere between wet sand and Play-Doh, maybe even a dry snow. Love the smooshing and molding capabilities! Pardon my ignorance, but what kinds of stores sell powdered paint? I don’t recall ever seeing it in a toy store… maybe a craft store?

  12. Tanzia A. Lokman says

    August 26, 2013 at 8:14 pm

    Can you use food coloring instead of powder paint?

  13. Lauren says

    August 27, 2013 at 12:51 pm

    Wow! It was great I got a B+ in science from this!

  14. Shelly says

    September 11, 2013 at 11:23 pm

    Where do you get the powdered paint? I’ve tried a teacher supply store and called 3 craft stores and no one carries it? We tried food coloring for kicks, but of course it turned my son’s hands red. 🙂

  15. mary says

    November 13, 2013 at 8:16 pm

    I am taking child-development classes in college and I had to do an activity with kids inn the daycare on campus and we did a moon sand activity and let me tell you it went great a little girl has so much fun doing it I wish you had other activity’s that kids might like pleas email me with other ideas that they might like yours truly mary

  16. Helen says

    November 17, 2013 at 12:10 am

    What would make this recipe even better is using earth paint powder.

  17. mens groups says

    December 7, 2013 at 11:59 pm

    Valuable information. Blessed my family I came across your website by chance, using this program . pleasantly surprised exactly why this kind of accident did not was held prior! I actually saved as a favorite that.

  18. Bailey Mitchell says

    December 12, 2013 at 7:09 pm

    Does it dry out after a while?

  19. Mike says

    December 19, 2013 at 6:07 am

    Craft stores like Michael’s sell colored sands in any color you like, no paint or dye needed and no stained hands! It works just as well as regular play sand.

Trackbacks

  1. Have A Beach Day In Your Own Backyard - Melissa & Doug Blog says:
    July 22, 2013 at 1:03 pm

    […] Check out Anna’s great recipe for moon sand for full […]

  2. Volcanoes - Layers of Learning says:
    July 29, 2013 at 1:28 am

    […] to build your “volcano” base, leaving a nice big hole in the center.  Ours is made of homemade moon sand.  You can also use salt dough, play dough, dirt outside in a mound or just a tall thin […]

  3. Balloon Squishy Balls « Frugal Fun For Boys says:
    August 1, 2013 at 3:32 am

    […] mix up some homemade moon sand!  Recipe from The Imagination […]

  4. Eleven Ways to Have Fun With Kids » My Craftily Ever After My Craftily Ever After says:
    August 3, 2013 at 6:04 pm

    […] Moon sand – hello glitter!  This is another easy recipe…even your kids can help make it!  I love changing up the sand into something new and different and your kids will love it too! […]

  5. The final frontier | Memphis-style Homeschool says:
    September 5, 2013 at 3:17 am

    […] moon sand was our final space sensory activity. I followed this recipe, although I omitted the glitter and substituted smashed sidewalk chalk for the tempera paint (since […]

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About The Imagination Tree Hello and welcome! I'm Anna, Mama of 4, early years teacher and play enthusiast from the UK! Click here to read more about me.

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