Sea, sand, shells and ships

The perfect way to bring to beach to you on a bright sunny day.

Small world beach play.

What you need:

- large plastic storage bin

- sand

- water dyed using blue Crayola bath colour dropz

- selection of rocks and pebbles

- sea shells

- Toobs ships

- a few scoopers and pots for tipping and shovelling

The set up.

How it works:

A fun way to enjoy the beach without having to travel or spend the whole evening getting sand out of in-between your toes. This was nice and easy to set up and my son even got involved in making the small world. He helped by dying the water blue (we just added half a blue Crayola bath colour dropz) and then adding it to the sand, rocks and shells.

Carefully adding the sea water.

A little less carefully adding the sea water.

Once all the elements were in the tub my son loved just mixing the dry sand and wet water and watching how it changed. He was intrigued by all of the different shaped shells and liked burying them in the sand. His favourite thing to do was build moats in the sand and drive his Toobs ships through them.

Mixing the sand and sea.

Building a moat for his ship to sail through.

Steering the ship through the sea towards the moat.

It wasn't long before my son went scurrying off to see what else he could find to put in the beach small world. He soon declared the beach to be a monster truck swamp followed by a train ditch. It was so nice for me to see him happy being so hands on with lots of different sensory materials. He even asked to play with it again several days later (it didn't look very appealing to me!!).