How to Make Moon Sand for Toddler Sensory Play

I made some moon sand for my son to try, and it was so much fun! Here’s how to make moon sand at home with only two ingredients.

There are lots of recipes for how to make moon sand floating around online, and I loved this simple one from Love and Laundry. My only problem with her recipe is that it calls for baby oil, which is a petroleum product. It’s also not intended for eating, and my son still likes to taste things that he’s playing with.

This was my first time making moon sand, and it’s super fun. It’s powdery, yet it holds a shape when you press it. Your kid might think that you have done magic.

I divided my moon sand into two batches. One I left undyed. The other I colored using leftover gel colors from making toddler-friendly play dough for my guy. I liked how the colored moon sand turned out, but I will say that the food coloring did dye my hands a little bit. Worth it to see my kid have so much fun, though!

How to Make Moon Sand That’s Safe to Eat

Here’s how to make moon sand or colored moon sand!

Materials

+ 4 cups flour (The recipes I’ve seen call for white, but I used white wheat, because that’s what we had in the pantry. It worked fine.)

+ 1/2 cup edible oil of your choice (I used sunflower.)

+ food coloring, optional

Directions

1. Mix together your flour and oil, getting in there with your hands until it doesn’t feel oily anymore. It takes a bit of kneading, so keep at it! You’re not forming a ball of dough. The cool thing about moon sand is that it looks crumbly – like sand – but it will hold shapes when you press it.

2. If you’re planning to color your moon sand, add the coloring a few drops at a time, kneading it really well until it’s totally incorporated. It took a very generous squeeze of gel coloring to get the blue that you see at the top of the page. And like I said, it dyed my hands. Worth it!