Making your own kinetic sand is a fun and easy activity for kids. With just a few affordable ingredients, you can have hours of creative playtime with homemade, moldable kinetic sand. Get the full easy homemade kinetic sand recipe and instructions here!
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What is Kinetic Sand and Why is it so Fun?
Kinetic Sand is a unique type of moldable sand that has the ability to move and flow like wet sand but never dries out or hardens. It’s perfect for kids and adults alike who love to play with regular sand, but don’t want the mess of traditional beach or sandbox sand. Kinetic Sand is fun to shape, mould, and manipulate in all sorts of different ways. Plus, it’s easy to make your own kinetic sand at home with a few simple ingredients! Keep reading to learn more about this amazing product and how you can make your own DIY kinetic sand.
Traditional kinetic sand you would purchase from the shops can be expensive and why spend that money when you can make your own out of ingredients you already have using this easy kinetic sand recipe?
How to play with kinetic sand
You can play with kinetic sand in so many ways! Very simply your child will love just playing with it in a large tub or bowl, squishing it with their hands and letting it run through their fingers. It is a great sensory material and there are lots of sensory activities that you can do with it. Much fun can be had mixing it, shaping it, pressing it down and mixing it.
You can also use different cookie cutters, blocks and moulds to create more fun at play time. Use the cookie cutters to shape the sand into shapes, and you can use moulds to make solid sand figures. We have a brick mould which is great for making individual bricks to build into a wall - and have a digger come crashing it down! Kinetic sand allows for fine motor skills development as well as imaginative play.
You can use kinetic sand to practice measuring - count out a cup of sand at a time using a measuring cup and compare different sizes.
If you are up for making a large amount of kinetic sand you could use put it in a large bin (shallow), protect the floor with an old sheet and add a cup of water at a time to make sand slime and work on those gross motor skills, squelching and crawling through it. Not for the faint hearted mess wise obviously! This is a lot of fun for kids of all ages but make sure that you have adult supervision as it can get slippery. To make extra simply double / triple the recipe making sure to keep the parts cornstarch and part oil ratio the same.
Ingredients
- Coloured sand
- Cornstarch / cornflour
- Vegetable oil
- Liquid dish soap / washing up liquid
- PVA glue
For exact quantities see the recipe card below.
Instructions
Stir together sand and cornstarch. The corn starch will not mix well (white streaks will remain) but stir until evenly blended.
Add the oil and press the sand into the oil using the back of a spoon.
Then, add the liquid dish soap and press into the sand using the back of a spoon. The mixture will resemble a moon sand when pressed together but will fall apart quickly.
Add the PVA glue and stir (pressing if needed) until completely combined.
Because all sands can be different, test your kinetic sand to make sure it is clingy enough without being sticky and that it is at your desired consistency. If you want a clingier sand, add a little more glue, combining well after each small addition.
Store in an air-tight container at room temperature.
Kinetic Sand Recipe
Making your own kinetic sand is a fun and easy activity for kids. With just a few affordable ingredients, you can have hours of creative playtime with homemade, moldable kinetic sand. Get the full easy homemade kinetic sand recipe and instructions here!
Ingredients
- 400 grams coloured sand
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons liquid dish soap
- 2 tablespoons PVA glue
Instructions
-
Stir together sand and cornstarch. The corn starch will not mix well (white streaks will remain) but stir until evenly blended.
-
Add the oil and press the sand into the oil using the back of a spoon.
-
Then, add the liquid dish soap and press into the sand using the back of a spoon. The mixture will resemble a moon sand when pressed together but will fall apart quickly
-
Add the PVA glue and stir (pressing if needed) until completely combined
-
Because all sands can be different, test your kinetic sand to make sure it is clingy enough without being sticky and that it is at your desired consistency. If you want a clingier sand, add a little more glue, combining well after each small addition.
-
Store in an air-tight container at room temperature.
If you can't buy coloured sand you can always colour regular play sand using food coloring. Why not make lots of batches in different colors so your little one can mix and combine them! Try using this easy recipe to make bright colors and use them to make a rainbow or work on colour matching or colour recognition.
This will keep for a couple of weeks if kept dry in an airtight container.
Yes, you should always use play-safe sand when using it as a play item for children. Play-safe sand is a fine sand which has been checked to make sure there is nothing unsafe in there. Even fine beach sand could contain nasties so it is better to use a proper play sand.
The best part about kinetic sand is that it is really easy to clear up. It clumps together when you want it to so it is much easier to clean up than regular sand as you can clean it up like you would playdough by using a clump of it to attract all the little bits.
You can definitely experiment, depending upon the consistency of the oil you might need more or less sand and cornstarch.
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