Temperature Sand Art for Kids Sensory Activity

December 9, 2019January 20, 2021 Crystal Rapinchuk 0 Comments

I LOVE using craft sand for sensory activities – especially when I can mix it up into a math and science lesson! The below project is found originally on Surviving a Teacher’s Salary – it turned out SO awesome! You mostly only need craft sand plus their printable to make this temperature sand art for kids!

Materials Needed:

Art sand – 4-5+ different colors
Art sand bottles (basic shapes work best)
Small funnel
Optional – hot glue

We did this activity using this “Record the Temperature” graph from Surviving a Teacher’s Salary but you can totally just do this every day as a daily activity and work on building your temperature sand art together. Designate a color of sand for a pattern of temperatures then add it to your bottle – more details below!

Choosing your art sand bottle –

A clear container in a basic shape works best for this project. So a slim bottle shape or triangle as opposed to a palm tree design or dolphin bottle. You can do a tall slim bottle or a cool globe shaped bottle! The choice is yours!

Choose what location you want to monitor the temperatures for. For us we chose a city in the Midwest. You can do your own town, or do several bottles charting temperatures from around the world!

Depending on how many colors of art sand you have, designate a range of temperatures per sand color. For example, choose an orange color for temperatures 45*-49*, yellow for 40*-44*, white for 35*-39*, light blue for 30*-34*, dark blue for 25*-29*, purple for 20*-24*, etc.

The more colors and shades of art sand you have the better! You can change the temperature range based on how many colors of art sand you have/need. I recommend having at least 8 colors of sand if possible. The more the better!

Every day look at the average temperature and pour in a 1/4 cup of art sand based on the color designated for that temperature! If you want a smaller project done all at once you can pre-graph an extended period of time, use less than 1/4 cup of art sand, or choose the average temperature per MONTH of a specified city.