Now that summer is here, it is the perfect time to take children’s art explorations outside. Whether on the beach or in a sandbox, sand provides excellent opportunities for two- and three-dimensional art activities, fine motor development, and sensory exploration. There are many fun art activities that can be done with sand – most using simple, inexpensive materials you already have.
Possible Sand Art Activity Supplies
- Sand
- Water
- Plastic cups, spoons, measuring cups, bowls, and containers
- Shaving cream
- Paint in your child’s favorite colors
- Cookie sheet
- Chalk
- Construction paper
- Sifter
- Glue
- Chopstick
- Popsicle stick
- Food coloring
- Fingers and hands!
Create a Sand Sculpture
Molding wet sand offers children a different sensory experience than playing with dry sand. Wet sand can be used for sculptures, towers, and to form shapes. Encourage your child to first experiment with the sand itself, using his or her hands to mold it into shape. Talk about how the sand feels and the different effects that can be made with hands – prints, lines, curves, and three-dimensional forms.
Children may also use various scooping and modeling tools to fine-tune their creations. Modeling tools are available for purchase at toy and drug stores, but many things you already have will work just as well. Teaspoons, measuring cups, buckets, and plastic containers all make great molds. Manipulating these tools gives children valuable practice with fine muscle challenge and helps them to understand how one object can aid them in creating another.
Make a Textured Painting
When children paint or draw on a textured surface, the resulting drag lets them “feel” what they draw. This “feeling,” in turn, strengthens fine motor skills, both for young children just learning to hold a drawing tool and for older children practicing new compositional skills. There are two different ways you and your children can use sand to create a textured surface for painting.
For both activities, you will need to start by pouring sand through a sifter to clean it. Children may be interested in the items that filter out of the sand and you may want to take some time to discover where those pieces of shell, small rocks, and animals came from.
One way to create texture is to completely cover a piece of construction paper with glue. Then pour sand over the paper, sticking it to the glue and shaking off the excess. When the sand is dry (probably the next day), your child can paint over it with watercolors or watered down tempera paint.
Another way to create texture is to simply mix sand into some paint colors. Then dip a paintbrush into the colors and brush them onto paper just as you would with plain paint. Either way you choose to approach the textured painting project, the result will be a bumpy, touchable work of art.
Draw Some Lines in the Sand
Use some wet sand on the beach, dampen the sand in a sandbox, or simply fill a cookie sheet with moist sand and allow your child to practice drawing either with his or her finger or with a tool, such as, a twig, a chopstick, a popsicle stick, or a spoon. When he or she is ready to create something new, smooth the sand with your hand or let the waves wash the first drawing away to make space for another.
The sand can also be mixed with shaving cream on the cookie sheet for your child to feel the contrast of rough and smooth textures as he or she finger paints. Or go a step further and add food coloring to the sand and shaving cream mixture to make some washable colored paints. A blue mixture could mimic the ocean and encourage a child to make some waves of his or her own.
Design a Colored Sand Collage
Place ¼ cup of sand in a plastic bag and add one piece of colored chalk. Crush the chalk and mix it with the sand. A child’s toy hammer or a rolling pin works well for crushing the chalk and shaking the bag does an excellent job of mixing. While your child is crushing the sand, you may want to use the opportunity to talk about how sand is formed from the weathered particles of eroding rocks, minerals, and fossilized animals.
After you have made three or four colors of sand, place each color in a separate small bowl. Your child can squirt glue onto a sheet of construction paper (either in shapes or abstract designs) and then sprinkle the sand onto the paper. Help your child work with one color at a time and tip the excess sand back into the bowls to save it for another picture. To prevent younger children from dumping the sand, you may want to fill clean emptied spice containers or salt shakers with the sand and then use them to shake sand onto the paper.
More Outdoor Explorations
Sand is a readily available art medium that can lead to any number of creative activities while exercising the five senses and learning about the science of nature. Once you and your child have explored sand’s possibilities, you may want to create art from other natural materials, such as clay, rocks, and flowers.
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