Sensory, tactile, elemental, a place to create a natural world – children love sand and water areas.

Plan and equip your sand and water learning area with a solidly constructed versatile table and a variety of well-made tools, but don’t stop there. Introduce other natural elements:

Leaves
Potting Soil
Twigs,
Pebbles
Feathers

Experiment mixing natural elements with human made such as paper, wood, metal and tools.

Heuristic Play Loose Parts

Introduce a variety of colours, textures, shapes and materials. Bury, immerse, sink to provoke. Or just put it in front of the children to see how they play and learn.

LEARN MORE about Louise Kool's Heuristic Play and Loose Parts Collection

heuristic learning loose parts natural materials image louise kool

Tools and Toys

Really almost any well-made tool or toy can add to your sand and water area. But this is where investment in quality can make a big difference.

Toys

Tools

Connecting with STEM

“Because of its sensory nature, sand play is an excellent medium for exploration and discovery and provides opportunities to integrate STEM education into preschool classrooms.”

Dr. F. Joyce Gerber communityplaythings.com - Exploring Sand Play. (2017). Retrieved April 1, 2017, from http://www.communityplaythings.com/resources/articles/2014/exploring-sand-play

With the right materials In a Sand and Water area children can engineer and experiment with natural elements. But can also discover how the relationships in nature are reflected in math expressions.

Science

Technology

Engineering

Math

Art and Expression

Bring art to sand and water and see how the elements imprint the art.

Take away the sand and the water and your hard wearing, water ready table could be a great place to discover new artistic expressions

That sand can do amazing things on your light table.