What is so magical about kinetic sand?
I often have these discussions with colleagues and parents. It’s messy and it’s a nightmare to clean up, but most children absolutely love it (and secretly I love it too). It’s a super fun and engaging texture and the colours and beautiful and vibrant!
When I use kinetic sand in therapy, I like to have small toys to bury and tools to help dig up the toys. I can be used for a variety of speech and language targets:
- Practicing prepositions or location words (in/under/inside/outside the sand)
- Increasing vocabulary of places you can find sand e.g. talk about the beach or the playground. By doing this you can include animals, colours and verbs
- Practicing sentences using the phrase “I found ______” when finding toys hidden in the sand
- Describing objects you found in the sand (e.g. size, category, colour, sound it makes, function)
- Practicing speech sounds by hiding objects that have the speech sound in the object’s name or hiding picture cards
- Pairing the sand play to a common movie or book of interest e.g. Finding Nemo, can engage children further, giving you an opportunity to ask wh- questions, similarities and differences, narrative and lots more!
Image taken from: https://www.greenmatters.com/p/diy-kinetic-sand
