2 Step Magic Sensory Sand for Babies

Ever since Edison turned five months old (where has the time gone!), we have really been focusing on sensory activities to help hone in his perception skills and keep his growing mind occupied.

Of course, the idea of kinetic sand crossed my mind. Kinetic sand is such a great sensory tool and super fun to play with! The only problem is: it’s not safe for children under 3.

So I went on the hunt for something similar that was baby safe and I quickly found it over at EmmaOwl.com. She calls it “Magic Sand” and it’s made with just two ingredients; flour and oil.

I loved the simplicity of it, and the fact that it was safe for babies in Edison’s age range.  But I wanted something that was a bit more textured like wet sand and also a bit thicker. So I took her recipe and modified it by adding polenta and a bit of corn starch.

This was an immediate hit for Edison, and super fun for Stephen and I was well. While  this doesn’t have the same movement or viscosity as kinetic sand, it’s a super close  and safe second that you can enjoy with your little one right now.

And the best part was, this cost us little to nothing! We opted to get a bigger container for Edison to play in (which ran us $1 at Dollar Tree) but everything else we already had in our pantry.

This is a prefect weekend DIY that only took us 5 minutes to make and lead to hours of fun!

What You’ll Need:

1 cup oil ( I used olive oil, but you cause a range of baby safe oils, including coconut oil)

1 cup polenta or one corn meal

8 cups flours

A container (for mixing and storage)

How to make it:

Step 1: In your container, mix the 8 cups of flour with the 1 cup of polenta. The polenta will help give your magic sand that gritty, sandy texture

Step 2 : Mix in oil slowly with the flour and polenta mixture until the ingredients start to become partially saturated. The mixture will should resemble a  dry pie dough. If your mixture becomes overly saturated with oil, simply add more flour or polenta until you get the consistency that you want.

Step 3: Play! While this ‘sand’  will stick to itself and  is moldable like wet sand, it is in no way mess freeI highly recommend putting this sand in a big container for the little ones to play in, or putting it on a mat or in a little kiddy pool, just so pick up won’t be an issue.

This project is super easy , cheap and quick to do and keeps the kids entertained for a good amount of time, so this DIY is defiantly new mom approved by me!

Are you going yo give this project a go? Let us know if you do below =]