Sand in a bottle: so simple and so fun!

 

We’ve been having so much fun with coloured sand lately. If you haven’t seen how easy it is to make coloured sand,  you can find the instructions here. Since seeing the man at the market making bottled sand, I couldn’t wait to let the girls experiment with patterns and colour contrasts all on their own.  My twins can be very messy, so it was nice to know they could create as much sandy mess as they liked.

Sand is such a lovely natural product to play with and so tactile too. As soon as I put the coloured sand in front of the girls, they ran their fingers through it, pinched it and even made hand prints. I put the glass jars in fron

 

t of them and they started making their sand bottles right away.

Coloured Sand in a bottle: what you’ll need:

• Learn how to make Coloured Sand
• A small – medium bottle or glass jar
• A funnel or a container to help the children tip the sand into the jar
• Skewers

It’s quite easy to make lovely patterns in the jar.  Here’s a few tips:

• Use contrasting colours to create bold effects. Why not make a zebra themed bottle with white and black sand or a tiger with orange and white? We will be exploring more sand colours soon.
• Lean the jar slightly on its diagonal side before adding the next coloured sand layer to get flowing diagonal lines.
• Use the skewers to create patterns in the sand. Push the sand with the skewer down against the side of the jar to the next coloured layer to create sharp Vs in the sand. They create lovely patterns.
• Don’t forget to make a rainbow sand bottle. My girls loved adding all the colours together.

Once you’ve finishing making your sand bottle, tap the bottle very gently on the table to settle the sand slightly before adding more sand until it’s full. Make sure you secure the lid tightly.

Viola, beautiful coloured and patterned sand in a bottle.

Are you going to try this activity?