Sand Box Safe Play Sand

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Sand Box - Safe Play Sand Concerns
The image below is a standard warning label found on a bag of children's "play sand":

I thought I was ready to buy a sand box for my girls, until I heard about the potential dangers of the commercial play sand itself - which is not the same as beach sand in most cases. The warning is very tiny on the play-sand sold at our Home Depot, shown in tiny print on the bottom-back of the bag, saying to avoid breathing the sand dust without a respirator because it causes cancer. Oh my gosh! - yet it is still sold as "play sand" anyway and there is no indication on the front of the bag that it could be dangerous. And the "safe sand" products I found on the internet can be cost prohibitive for many families. If you ask around locally, you might find a safe source for sand though, or maybe something different like a small pea gravel or even regular soil from your yard if available. My sister said "I ended up finding a sand company that supplies lots of the sand to preschools - but mostly for construction and things...they get their sand from the Santa Cruz river area - they dig it up - and there aren't any additives".
As far as the sandbox itself, many types of wood have pesticides added for outdoor use, but we found some cedar sandboxes that are completely natural with nothing added to the wood. Cedar wood naturally protects itself from insect attack and it also smells really nice.

I also noticed my toddlers love to play in the vegetable garden soil, so I now try to leave small areas of soil unplanted. Sometimes I dig up a shovel-full or two of the soil for them when it gets too compacted for their little shovels to dig easily. They also like to dump water inside a bucket of soil and then make shapes and mounds with the mud they form in their hands. First they stir up the soil and water to make the mud slurry, or "mud soup" as they call it (this was their own idea). I really don't find it inconvenient at all for them to get muddy. After all, they seem to need a bath after playing with sand at the beach too, and when the sand gets stuck on their scalp it can be really difficult to remove sometimes under the hair. They enjoy finding worms in the garden soil too, making it into a nature/learning experience. If there are fire ant mounds in the play-area of the garden, they can be easily killed with just pots of boiling water - usually 2 pot-fulls carrying from the stove-top will do the trick and they're completely gone the next day and don't come back any faster than when using pesticides, which are harmful to children and the environment too. A few years ago, I wrote a couple of articles about organic gardening:
Organic Gardening
Local organic farming: "reconnecting with the Earth"
And if you'd like to get involved with the movement to plant heirloom vegetable seeds also, we now offer these at our store.

Children's Outdoor Play & Learning Environments: Returning to Nature
(by Randy White & Vicki Stoecklin) Playground Paradigm Paralysis: We are all creatures of our experience, and our common experiences usually shape the conventional wisdom, or paradigms, by which we operate. When most adults were children, playgrounds were asphalt areas with gross motor play equipment such as swings, jungle gyms and slides where they went for recess. Most adults see this as their model for a children's playground.
The Importance of Nature to Children: Studies have provided convincing evidence that the way people feel in pleasing natural environments improves recall of information, creative problem solving, and creativity. Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder. Wonder is important as it a motivator for life long learning. There is also strong evidence that young children respond more positively to experiences in the outdoors than adults as they have not yet adapted to unnatural, man-made, indoor environments.
The natural world is essential to the emotional health of children. Just as children need positive adult contact and a sense of connection to the wider human community, they also need positive contact with nature and the chance for solitude and the sense of wonder that nature offers. When children play in nature they are more likely to have positive feelings about each other and their surroundings.
It is unfortunate that children can't design their outdoor play environments. Research on children's preferences shows that if children had the design skills to do so, their creations would be completely different from the areas called playgrounds that most adults design for them. Outdoor spaces designed by children would not only be fully naturalized with plants, trees, flowers, water, dirt, sand, mud, animals and insects, but also would be rich with a wide variety of play opportunities of every imaginable type.
-Randy White & Vicki Stoecklin, White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA
http://www.whitehutchinson.com/children/articles/outdoor.shtml (click here to read full article)

I also found some interesting reading on the history of community playground design in the United States. Most parents have probably noticed that all playgrounds look pretty much the same these days! - but this was not always the case in the past. This might be something for us to think about when designing our back yard play-areas and gardens as well.
On our recent trip to Corpus Christi, TX, we found a neat playground next to the beach (Cole Park) and here are some photos of my adorable niece Zora playing at the park. The kids explored all the tunnels for hours:

The photo below is of a New York City playground in 1966.

"It was not long before Americans put so much trust into equipment that they failed to realize that the equipment itself did not constitute a playground."-American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space By Susan G. Solomon

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