Squishy Sticky Sandy

Kinetic Sand!!! It's heaps of fun and feels super cool, whether you're a kid, or a kid in an adult costume. (I'm the latter.) This recipe might not make sand quite as good as the commercial one, but you can make it with ingredients you probably already have, and the whole process is fun! I also have a tip at the end for how to turn it into a science experiment when your kids get bored of playing with it.

 

Ingredients:
Bicarb soda
Baking powder
Dishwashing Liquid
Sand

See? Pretty darn simple! Let's go!

Step 1: Go to the beach and get your sand! If you haven't already, of course. Preferably take a cute dog with you, as illustrated.

If you want coloured sand, I've read that the way to go is to pause at this step, mix through some food dye, and let it dry in the sun before continuing. (If you don't let it dry, it will stain your hands.) I didn't bother with this because I was really keen to play with the sand and wasn't keen to wait around.




Step 2: Mix 2tbsp baking soda with 1 tbsp baking powder. This is a method I read, before altering the recipe to suit the kind of sand I wanted, and I'm not actually sure if it makes a difference. I'm sure 3tbsp baking soda would work fine. Then mix in 1tbsp of dishwashing liquid. If your dish soap is an environmentally friendly one, you get extra brownie points. This mix should make a kind of... goo? If you don't have sand, you can just add bicarb until you like the consistency, and play with that, but I don't think you can really call it kinetic sand without the sand!

Note: I have all my measurements in tablespoons because I only made a small batch- about a handful. Feel free to use a cup or larger measure instead! Just stick to the same ratio.

Step 3: Add a tablespoon or so of sand, and mix it through as well as possible. This might make a quite dry mix, so knead it a little and test the consistency. Mine was still very sticky, and crumbly.

Step 4: If yours is still as sticky and crumbly as mine, add a sprinkle more bicarb soda, and knead it through. Mine now feels pretty good! If yours isn't quite right, add a little bit more bicarb, or maybe some extra detergent - adjust the ingredients as you like to suit your idea of what kinetic sand should feel like.


Step 5: Play with it!! Knead it, mould it, cut it, stick it back together again, pretend it's a stress ball... My favourite thing to do with mine was to make a little loaf of bread, and slice it up with a butter knife. Cutting through that sandy texture just feels so cool!

Step 6: When you and kids finish playing with it, make sure to wash your hands thoroughly, and put some moisturiser on-- remember, there's a lot of detergent in there, so it dries your skin out a bit.

Optional Final Step: If your kinetic sand doesn't
turn out great, or you get bored of it... You know how the main ingredient is bicarb soda? You know what bicarb soda reacts with? Yep, that's what I'm suggesting: Add some vinegar and turn it into a volcano/ science experiment!! As long as your batch is small, it's quite safe, it just froths a lot, so do it outside or over a sink.
When the reaction is done and your kids (or you) are satisfied that the whole kinetic sand attempt was good fun, (even if it ended with a volcano instead of kinetic sand,) just chuck out the remaining frothy concoction. It's not the easiest thing to dispose of since its kind runny, but I just put mine in a takeaway container. Otherwise, you can add a heap more sand so it's less runny before chucking it. Please don't chuck it back into the beach or into your garden! There's a lot of detergent and bicarb in there, and I don't think plants or fishies like that stuff.  And I like plants and fishies, so I like to be nice to them.

Anyway, I hope you had plenty of fun! Whether or not it's a perfect replica of store-bought kinetic sand, making your own is a fun activity, perfect for a rainy day.

~Motivational~

Yo! So this is just a brief post, for any Kikki k fans out there... a daily goals chart!

I saw a lil' set of 'daily goals' sticky notes on one of my many visits to the store, (I justify shopping trips by telling myself I won't buy anything, I'll just look for craft ideas), and decided to make my own. The idea is to write down small goals that you want to achieve daily, or maybe every second day, and reward yourself if you do them.

It's a very simple project, but you can jazz it up as much as you like.

Materials:
Ruler
Sharp pencil
Felt tip pen (for nice neat writing!)
Filing cards or similar small pieces of card
Decorating materials of your choice (eg. coloured paper, glitter, washi tape, coloured pens, stickers)

Method:

1. If your card isn't already lined, use the ruler to measure out where to draw lines, which can be as closely spaced as 6mm. Mark 6mm intervals along each side of the card, and join them up, in pencil. Similarly, draw vertical lines every 6mm starting at the right edge of the paper, and making either 7 or 14 columns, depending on the size of your card, and leaving enough space on the left to write down your goals.
If you like, you can draw one extra column, probably on the right, for 'rewards' - maybe if you exercise every day for a week, you want to reward yourself with a chocolate bar, or diy face mask? (The latter will be explained in a post soon!)

2. Now bring forth your felt tip pen, and title your columns-- I put a big "goals" title on the left, in fancy writing, and very minimal day of the week titles for the small columns, with just the first letter of each day. Yes, Saturday and Sunday start with the same letter, but you know which one comes first, so it doesn't cause confusion! Note: you can make it even cuter by using coloured pens for this step. I wish I'd thought of that earlier.

3. Decoration time!! I left mine very plain, but that doesn't mean you have to! If you don't have enough goals to fill the page, add a few cute or encouraging stickers or doodles at the bottom. You could leave an extra margin along the left, and put a stripe of brightly patterned washi tape, or a line of glue to sprinkle glitter on. for a really pro look, cut a piece of coloured card about 1cm bigger than your main card, and glue it on the back to make a neat border. For mine, I just wrote a few words along the top to remind me of the quote: "How we spend our days is, after all, how we spend our lives." It adds that extra touch of inspiration to get me fulfilling those goals!

4. Use it! Tick off the items you do each day, and keep track of your progress. Maybe you aim to exercise every day, and practice an instrument twice a week? If you achieve your aim, reward yoself!