Coloured Sand

Coloured sand is such a simple sensory material to make and we use it all the time, especially in our colour themed sensory bins. Coloured rice is also good for colour themed sensory bins, but it's summer time so we are using sand. :)

There are tons of different methods to colour sand, including food colouring, liquid watercolours, powdered tempura paint, Duncan Hines Frosting Creations packets and Kool Aid (the last two add scents). Adding essential oils to the sand also adds lovely scents. :)

This week we made a batch of coloured sand that we are reserving for craft activities. We just used a few cups of sand from our bag of play sand and some food colouring.

We filled a sandwich baggie half-filled with sand.

Then we added the food colouring. I did end up doubling the sand and it took a lot of food colouring to get the desired colours (about half a bottle). 

Mixing the colours in is an easy task for the kids, although mine did not help with this batch because they were already asleep in bed. Just seal up the sandwich baggie, tape it closed if needed, and let them shake the bag around. Eventually the colour will mix throughout the sand. Bean and Munchkin love helping with this part.

And the colours came out really nice! We made red, green, yellow, blue, purple and orange (primary and secondary colours).

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