Learn How to Make Your Own Colorful Sand using salt for sensory play! This recipe is great for sensory play for kids. Add this colorful sand to sensory bins or bottles, add some scoops and cups or containers and enjoy play time!
We’ve been playing around with food coloring a lot lately!
For years, I didn’t even touch the stuff, but now I find that I can’t live without it. Why?
Because food coloring is amazing. It’s fun.
You can do so much with food coloring including fizzy fun, making sidewalk chalk paint, shaving cream rain, color changing milk, rainbow rice, and now our own colorful sand!
With three young kids in the house, I’m always on the lookout for fun and exciting projects to do with the kids.
Creating our own colorful sand was something that I’d do again.
It’s so easy to do and inexpensive as well. All you need is salt, food coloring, and plastic baggies!
How to Make Your Own Colorful Sand
Supplies:
Directions:
Pour 1/2 cup to 1 cup salt into a plastic baggie.
Drop 10-12+ drops of food coloring into the bag.
Squish the salt around in the bag until the food coloring evenly covers the salt. *Add more food coloring for a brighter color.
Let the colored salt sit in the plastic baggie overnight to make sure it’s dry.
Using a flat pan or plate, allow your child to play with the sand!
Give them a cup or spoon or other toys they can use to make their playtime even more fun.
You can even pour the colored salt into little containers and make pretty colored layers with it.
A few important notes:
*I did receive a question from a reader asking if salt would make hands dry. I didn’t experience this with my own children, but if you think the salt is in fact causing your child’s hands to get dry, I would recommend discontinuing the use. You can also use the salt for just scooping and pouring and avoid using hands in the salt.
**As with any activity involving small children, monitor your child during this activity to make sure they aren’t putting the colored salt in their mouth.
My girls enjoyed playing with their sand! When we were finished playing, we poured the sand back into the bags to save for another day! Try mixing the colors for more fun!
Kinetic sand is also a great idea if you are looking for alternative ways to play with sand!
Let me know if you tried this activity! Leave a comment below.
Learn How to Make Rainbow Rice for sensory play! Rainbow rice is great to place in sensory bins and can help teach color recognition.
Try our Magic Milk Science Experiment! Kids will enjoy watching the color changes from this fun experiment. We’ve completed this activity several times and it never gets old. This color changing milk activity is fun for adults, too!
This Shaving Cream Rain Science Experiment is quick to set up and fun for kids to see! Try a variety of colors to mix it up!
Learn How to Make Your Own Sidewalk Chalk Paint. Kids love drawing on the sidewalks. See what fun creations they come up with when they make their own chalk paint.
This fizzing activity is super cool! The Baking Soda and Vinegar Science Experiment only requires two ingredients (plus food coloring if desired) and is neat to watch the baking soda react with the vinegar.
Wow! This is so pretty, and looks like so much fun! My daughter would LOVE it for days that she can’t play outside in her sandbox! Great idea!
It looks fun!! I will try with my students.
Does the salt not dry out their hands though?
Thank you for your question. Great question! I addressed your question in the post with this response:
*Note: I did receive a question from a reader asking if salt would make hands dry. I didn’t experience this with my own children, but if you think the salt is in fact causing your child’s hands to get dry, I would recommend discontinuing the use. You can also use the salt for just scooping and pouring and avoid using hands in the salt.
My husband has dry skin issues and uses salt to moisturize it. seems to work for him. He discovered this after restoring a boat feral cats had nested in over the winter and it was so infested with fleas. He didn’t know they were on him til he saw the bites the next day. I knew salt had a drawing effect so he put handfuls of salt all over him. Took care of the itch and made his skin softer.
Do you think you could use actual sand.. I work with children and they would love this but it’s expensive to buy.. I’m thinking sand would also work instead of salt.. What are your thoughts?
I haven’t tried using actual sand, but you could certainly try it!
It’s great idea , just It’s not dangerous they can confuse with sugar?, just asking
Great question!
As with any activity involving small children, monitor your child during this activity to make sure they aren’t putting the colored salt in their mouth.
Could use this to fill decorative bottles, have done this with granddaughters and they loved it, used a small funnel to “aim” the sand and turned containers to make patterns then when really full put wax over the top to seal
This is a great idea!!!
No need to use sand ??
You could try using sand. I have not. I am not sure the color would show up as well using regular sand. Maybe I’ll experiment with that in the future!
Nice 1
I am looking to buy sand for a wedding to put into glass vases. I wonder if this would last long if kept air tight in the vase.
I’ve had this colored salt in our activity closet for a few months now and it still looks great.
We use to make it using chalk n salt…. Put the salt in a bowl n take a piece of chalk( whatever color u want to be) n put on side n slide around in the salt until it’s the color u wanted
I’ve never tried that before! Sounds like a great idea!
This is an awesome n easy idea. I just tried it with regular beach sand n it worked great. Make your own colored sand for your sand ceremony.
O.k. I followed the steps given above using blue food color (for an ocean project) and my sand is green ish not but. Is it because it need to dry? What did I do wrong?
So I meant blue
Nice idea but the salt might dry the hands maybe wear surgical gloves I might try that with my grand kids
Where did u find the food coloring in the pic? All I find is the bold colors and I need brighter colors like teal, coral, yellow etc. Thanks!
I found them at Walmart!
Could u use gel food coloring??
You could probably use gel food coloring, but I think the liquid food coloring would work a little better! I did use gel food coloring for the first time recently for some play dough I made but I wasn’t a fan and sticking with the liquid kind!
This is such a cute little idea!! I would have never thought of something like this. I myself might even enjoy something like this because I am a child at heart.
Wow procedure just a simple question will the wster was off the colur
I love this simple and easy.
thank you
You have such an amazing website!!!!
This looks like such a fun idea! Do you use regular table salt, or do you use a coarser salt that won’t break down as easily?
I use any kind of salt that I have on hand. I’ve used both kinds actually!
We loved playing with the colorful salt! I misunderstood the directions about letting it sit in the baggie overnight- I did let it sit, but maybe I was supposed to leave the baggies OPEN so the salt could dry… we did end up with blue hands! Still great sensory fun, though
Oh no! 🙂 It also depends on how much food coloring you add to the bag of salt. If you place too much, there may be some excess that will get on your hands. I’m glad you still had a great time.
I love this idea, will be trying this for the Halloween holiday season.
@tisonlyme143
Which food color did you use to get that the dark purple color? I tried to create that color by mixing blue and red food color but it just didn’t look very purple.