Why sand play is important in helping children’s development
Sand play is an easy activity to offer children, whether this is placing it in a sand tray with sand toys or mixing it with other items such as shaving foam or baby oil to make a new texture. When children are happily playing in the sand they are learning new skills and building on areas of their development.
Sand play promotes many areas of children’s development. It can help strengthen their large muscles as children use these muscles to dig, pour, scoop and shovel the sand. As children are pouring the sand into containers this is also improving their hand-eye coordination.
Sand play is a social activity as children play together and alongside other children. Children will work together to solve problems and share ideas and concepts. This type of learning is helping children to develop not only their social skills but also their negotiating skills. Children will at times find sharing an issue as they will want that particular spade another child has got. Supporting children through this phase will help them understand about sharing. Teaching children about sharing are one of the British Values which should be actively promoted within everyday practice.
As children are exploring sand play this can lead to dramatic play as children will use their imagination and begin engaging in making a house for the animals or making ice creams. As children become immersed in their dramatic play they will take on roles which again helps develop social skills.
If you are looking to incorporate mathematics into your environment sand play is a great way to do this. As children are pouring sand into containers adults can use mathematical language such more or less and use counting to count the amount of scoops of sand. Make sure you provide different sizes scoops and containers to extend the children’s learning. Also why not add resources such as weighing scales to your sand tray so children can learn about these maths concepts.
Sand play is great for developing children’s language skills as they learn new words relating to the names of objects in the sand tray as well as talking to their peers during their play.
Many practitioners forget that sand play can help children learn about science concepts. Depending on the space you have why not fix resources to the wall or above the sand area for example use ropes to pul pulleys to move buckets up and down, or fix PVC piping to your wall area to create channels of piping for the children to put sand down. There many other resources you could add, why not bury magnets in the sand and provide children with large handled magnets. Adding different textures to the sand such as gravel or water will create discussions among the children as they will see changes that happen when water is added.
An adult role in promoting Sand play
It is an adult’s role to support children during sand play and ask open ended questions to extend their learning opportunities. As sand play is an excellent open ended resource this gives practitioners plenty of opportunities to think how best to use this. Questions asked can be tailored to children’s play and should involve more than one-word answers.
Practitioners can use their skills and knowledge to provide an interesting an challenging sand play environment. Children interests can easily be incorporated as well as various resources can be added to extend children’s learning opportunities.
As we know children have a desire to play with sand. Practitioners needed to ensure these opportunities are offered daily both indoors and outdoors. Practitioners can build on children’s internet by adding props, asking opened ended questions and giving children time to fully explore their play. It is important that the sand play area is child entered so that children can create their own play using their imagination.