HOW OLD DOES MY CHILD NEED TO BE TO MAKE SAND ART PICTURES?

The official guidelines are 3 years, because there are fiddly little bits of paper, and you need some manual dexterity to open the caps and use the sticks.

But what we find is that parents and young children love making sand art pictures together, with the parent doing all the fiddly little jobs such as peeling off the paper, and opening up the sand tubes, and the child picking the bits they want to colour and then shaking the sand on, and tipping it off onto the tray.

And this makes a lovely combination, it really is a craft that parents can enjoy with their your children because with sand art there is nothing that spoils, and nothing that can be broken, the worse that can happen is that some bits end up a different colour than originally planned.

We find that when children get to about 5 years old they are very happy and very capable of making their pictures on their own, and that those between 3 and 5 need a bit of help to start off, but quickly get the hang of things.

Remember, if your child has a short attention span, or just gets diverted by something else happening at the same time, then there is no need to worry, simply ensure that the last peeled section is coloured with sand, then simply put it away and finish another day. It's not like paint, or modelling clay, or many other children's crafts, you can stop half way and finish an hour, a day, a week or even a month later and nothing will spoil.

We also get asked for what ages we would recommend sand art - and the official answer is 3 to 103, all you need to do is ensure that the design of the picture is something that the person receiving it would like to do, if the children are younger we would recommend simpler pictures with less sections to peel and colour, if the child is older, or an adult, we would recommend the pictures with lots of detail and lots of section, to allow for maximum creativity.

All of the components and products in our home kits are produced to EN71 (European Toy Standards) level, even the sand itself, so even when one of our consultants makes up a special personalised pack for you - you can rest assured that everything is produced to the highest level, we don't pretend that our kits are "crafts" so that we can produce to a lower level - everything is produced to the highest possible standard.

×