Patriotic Sand Craft for Kids

Today is Memorial Day and I’m feeling extra proud to be an American. So it’s inspired me to make an easy patriotic craft for kids! But really, adults would enjoy this too and it’s cute enough to display. I love crafts that are so versatile!

As you may have already read in my last post, we have a tonnnnn of unused sand. Like 200 lbs of it! So we’ve been looking for ways to make it into various crafts and activities. Aside from the potential for mess, it’s really been a lot of fun!

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I attempted to make homemade kinetic sand last week, but that was a fail haha! Check out my new Facebook group for funny kid crafts and craft fails to see how it turned out (spoiler alert: it didn’t). It was fun experimenting with the kids– I’ll continue trying and maybe I’ll have a recipe to share with you that actually works!

Thankfully, today’s craft not only worked, but it wasn’t as messy and turned out soooo cute! I’m so excited to share it with you. Honestly this is a fun one whether you have kids or not!

This craft is perfect for kids to get into the patriotic spirit. You can never start too young in teaching them how wonderful our country is! Especially on a day like Memorial Day, I think it’s really important to tell our kids about the important sacrifices that have been made for us to have this great country. 

An Easy 4th of July Craft for Kids

So with that in mind, we decided to make some sand decor to display as a 4th of July craft! The kids were able to be involved in every step, and we ended up with something enjoyable to look at.

We have lots of mason jars, so we did this three ways, all of which you can check out below. One only required one mason jar, and the others needed three. I’m sure you have at least one jar from back when mason jars were #trending for everything, haha!

Here’s how to make our patriotic craft for kids using mason jar sand craft:

Materials needed:

– 1 or 3 mason jars

– Enough sand to fill the jars (each of our jars held about 4 cups, but we had larger ones)

– Blue and red food coloring

– Glitter or little silver metallic stars

1. Dye part of the sand 

You’re going to want to separate your sand into 3 equal parts ahead of time. Then take one bowl of sand and add several drops of blue food coloring. I think we ended up using about 20 drops of each color. If the sand is dry, drip a tiny bit of water in and let the kids mix it up.

Ok maybe go outside for that part since kids are notoriously energetic mixers haha. Add water if it’s hard to spread, but be careful to not add so much that it gets really wet. If you don’t think it’s blue enough then add a bit more food coloring.

And repeat in the second bowl with the red! Leave the last one alone, this will count as our white. If you actually get white sand of course it works even better, we only had light brown play sand. But really I quite like it and thought ours had a certain rustic charm with the light brown.

2. Dry the sand

If you are using wet playsand or just put a bit too much water in for the food coloring, you’re gonna want to dry it out first. Wet sand is clumpy and sticks to the sides and just doesn’t lay right!

To dry the sand, you can leave it out in a thin layer or stick it in the oven. We are impatient, so it goes in the oven! I just spread each color out on a baking sheet and leave it in the oven for maybe 30 minutes at 300°F.

3. Mix glitter in with the blue sand

Once you have all your sand colored and dried, mix the glitter in with the blue sand if that’s what you’re using. I don’t say to mix the stars in because you can only see around the outside anyway. With the stars, you aren’t likely to see many of them since they don’t “mix in” like the glitter does.

But don’t worry, I have a way to use the stars if that’s your preference! And feel free to use glitter AND stars if you’re really into the sparkle and shine.

4. If using one jar…

Alternate adding red and white sand until there’s about 1/4 of the space left. If you are using stars, then add a little stick glue to them and stick around the top. Just need them to stick enough to stay put for a minute!

Then pour the blue sand in. Mason jar flag complete!

5a. If using three jars…

Fill two of them alternating red and white sand. Start with the same color for each and try to keep the amounts even. This way when they sit next to each other there’s a good flow. 

If you’re using stars, add a bit of glue to one side and stick them in the third jar randomly. If it’s hard to reach you can use tweezers to get some in. Then fill it up with the blue!

When you display them, put the blue jar to the left of the other two, of course!

5b. Another 3 jar variation

For this last option, you can do a combo of the first two. And it was actually my favorite one!

So what you can do is follow the instructions for step 3 and have one jar alternating red and white with blue at the top. Then do the other two jars just alternating red and white, trying to match up with the rows from the first one. This one is the most similar to an actual flag, so we loved it!

The kids and I loved making this cute 4th of July craft! It was easy but still a lot of fun for them to watch the sand pour in and make layers. I think they were a little mesmerized by it! 

We still have 3 more bags of sand to work through, so this will not be the last sand craft by far lol! Playing with sand is such a great sensory experience for kids, and it can be used in so many ways! I didn’t realize that until we had 4 large bags to use up ha, but we have some fun ideas in store for y’all.

While Memorial Day is a somber holiday, I hope you and your family have enjoyed this weekend while keeping in mind those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. This patriotic craft for kids serves as a reminder of how blessed we are to live in America.

And if you or your family have served in our military– thank you for your service to our country, it is greatly appreciated by all of us! 

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