Play Matters: Kinetic Sand Review

Disclaimer: I was sent a box of Kinetic Sand from Baby Vegas for the purpose of review. All opinions are my own or that of my kids. No money was received in return for writing this post. 

Just before the school holidays we received a box of kinetic sand and all three kids were pretty excited, yes even the 8 year old. No time was wasted in opening the box and getting started on building things. That afternoon the 4 year old had a friend over so they divided into groups and had a sand building competition. 

It wasn't an easy task picking a winner, let me tell you. I tried to placate them with a response that they all did a fabulous job (I was trying to keep the peace), but I was told that there had to be one winner... Let's just say the result led to some tears. 

But that was just day one of our experience with Kinetic Sand. Sometimes the kids build things with it, other times they draw pictures in the sand and well they also just like to sit there touching it and letting it fall through their fingers. Doing so seems to calm them. 

And whilst it is still sand and does make a mess, the clean up is pretty easy seeing as the sand clumps together unlike normal run of the mill sand. 

If you have no idea what Kinetic Sand is, here are some details from Baby Vegas. 

Build it, form it, smooth it, slice it, mould it, break it and recreate it!Kinetic Sand is 98% sand and 2% magic, the ‘magic’ bonding agent that causes the sand to stick only to itself in a soft clump. This sand-in-motion flows and shapes just like wet sand, but leaves surfaces completely dry and mess-free. When pressure is applied to Kinetic Sand, it keeps its shape allowing for all kinds of sculpting and molding. Kinetic Sand is totally reusable and it never dries out. As well as non-toxic, Kinetic Sand is anti-microbial and also adheres to Australian safety standards.For children aged 3 and up, and packaged in a 2.5KG box, Kinetic Sand is fun, indoor, mess-free sand.

• Special properties make it soft and stretchy

• Won’t make a mess (sticks to itself but not to you)

• Never dries out

• Non-toxic

• Store in a sealed container to keep clean and dust free

• Do not get wet

And the kids have already put this set of moulding toys on their wish list.

If you are looking for ways to encourage play with Kinetic Sand and some of the benefits of it here are a few posts that will give you some ideas:

Learning To Play and Playing To Learn
World Of Senses- The Benefits of Kinetic Sand
Mama OT- The Benefits of Using Kinetic Sand in Therapy



Do your kids enjoy playing with Kinetic Sand?

Saturday Morning Crafting

The kids had been begging me to do some painting for the past few days, but we have just had too much on. But this morning we had some quiet time and I broke out the kids watercolours.

 They loved it! And we need to do it more often!

And I can't wait to hang these up on the wall. They will add some much needed colour to this house.

Do you paint with your kids?

{Guest Post} Cooking Alphabet Soup

I am thrilled to be guest posting here on MahliMoo, Me and Three today. My name is Deirdre Smith and I am visiting from my blog JDaniel4’s Mom. My blog is about raising a very inquisitive four year old boy, the adventures we have, the special meals we create, the crafts we create, and the learning we do.

While Amy usually shares wonderful recipes that you can prepared to share at a family meal, I hope you won’t mind my sharing a recipe of cooking up a wonderful learning activity called Cooking Alphabet Soup.

Like most soup recipes this recipe starts with a large soup pot, a lot of water and, a ladle to stir the ingredients. Unlike regular soup recipes this one calls for foam alphabet letters and plastic or rubber treasures that will match up with the letters you put into the pot.


Here are the directions for the soup game:

-Dump all of your plastic and rubber treasure into the pot of water.

-Dump in foam letters that will match the treasures into the pot of water.

-Stir the objects up with a large ladle.

-Have your child scoop up an object for the pot with the ladle.

-Identify the object name of the letter or treasure..

-Identify the sound the letter makes if it is a letter or the sound the treasure begins with.

-Search the pot for the letter or object that will match the first object you scooped out.

-Start a line up of the letters and matching object on the ground or table top.

-Continue the process until all the letters and objects are matched up.

　

If your child gets frustrated with not finding a match quickly or the game seems to be taking to long, you can just have your child scoop out all the objects in the pot and line them with their matches all up at the same time.

The idea of the game is to have fun working with letters if the game stops being fun you can always just play with the objects in the pot. Your child can just scoop them up and plop them back into the pot.

After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, Deirdre Smith became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. She and her husband are the proud parents of J. Daniel the 4th and the blog is named for him. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog's FB page