Moon Sand Mess -- Pardon Me While I Vent

My boys love Moon Sand. I'm not Moon Sand's biggest fan, but I'm willing to accept the risk for the sake of happy kids who are exercising their creative muscles and (above all) are sitting still being good. I suggested to Grammy Vollmer that Timmy receive a Moon Sand play set for Christmas and she came through for us with the Neighborhood Playset. That along with some other containers of Moon Sand we had, and we have enough Moon Sand to even entertain friends who come over to play (which we did a couple weeks ago!).

(By the way, the picture of the neat, clean red and blue Moon Sand siding on the house on the product mentioned above is some sort of pipe dream -- Timmy loves "painting" the house, but it would never look that nice.)

Hit the link above, check out the customer reviews about it. I feel both ways -- I'm thrilled that my boys enjoy it so much, but it is indeed a bear to clean up. And even after the visible sand is cleaned up, if you walk around my kitchen barefoot for a couple days afterwards, you still feel the grit that my vacuum, dustbuster, broom and sponge didn't quite get up. Again, an acceptable risk for the sake of happy kids, I guess.

There's apparently this inflatble play box thing for Moon Sand. Tempting. I wonder how well it would actually work, say on our back porch or something.

So this afternoon the boys spent 45 minutes or so with Moon Sand, and even though the boys make a good effort, there's still a colossal mess on my kitchen floor when they're done. And since sweeping up the stuff on the floor brings along dog hair, grated parmesean cheese, crushed Cheerios and the like, there's no way I'm putting Floor Moon Sand back in with the clean stuff. So I'd estimate a 5-7% loss of product with every play session.

I'm also a tyrant about keeping the colors separated. I know, I know, I'm probably hampering their creativity somewhat, and it's contrary to the commericals and pictures on the packages of Moon Sand of colors, colors everywhere, but they just don't mix nicely.

Before:

From 2008 01 14 Mo...

After:

From 2008 01 14 Mo...

Moon Sand Mayhem...Mitigated!

Timmy received a Moon Sand set for his birthday from our friends, Julie and Doug and their kids Evan and Kate. Julie recently had her kids over to play and we broke out the Moon Sand -- as we saw the 7% fall to the floor (read more about my estimated 5-7% Moon Sand loss rate here), we had a discussion about the inflatable tray I was interested in. Bless her heart, she remembered and Timmy got to unwrap a set with the tray on his birthday. Yay! It's quite nifty, with a velcro top -- so after Timmy finished, it was really simple to pop on the lid and put the tray away. Probably cut my cleanup time by over 50%!

(All you Air Force-types reading this -- how's that for some action/impact statements!)

So here's Timmy enjoying his Sand Castle kit in the inflatable tray. What a difference! The loss rate is now down to ~1%, at most! That's a phenomenal 6% reduction in Floor Moon Sand! More fun and creative productivity for the kids! Whoo hoo!

From 2008 01 26 Ti...

Tangent: Paul sent me this funny story today, and there's a part of the story about the purchaser having to page through all these web sites that ask you to add more stuff to your shopping cart before you can ever check out (he fell for it and bought an accessory). That reminded me of what I encountered at MoonSand.com when I was trying to look for an inflatable Moon Sand play tray earlier this month. I know you're curious -- go ahead, hit the link, note how the page is laid out to try to canoodle you into buying more and more and more Moon Sand.

Shameless Pitch #574

Today I felt like a pretty good Mommy.

I started bringing the boys' crafty stuff out of their closets, starting with Moon Sand. If you remember my previous gripes right after the holidays about Moon Sand, now I can set them out on the back patio and cleaning up is an absolute minimum!

Yay!

(The loss rate is still about the same, though.)

I also discovered a new craft addiction: Perler Beads! You've probably seen these around, they've been around for years. It's a great exercise to improve fine motor skills. I first saw Perler Bead crafts actually being made during Jake's ice skating camp back in June/July. It's one of the activities the kids could do before/after camp actually started. Jake wasn't that interested, though.

I was browsing our local Hobby Lobby on Tuesday and saw an area featuring little starter kits for $7.99 each. I had a coupon (of course) so it was more like $5 for a transportation-based kit: about 2200 beads and 3 assembly trays.

I brought it home and it was instantly a big hit with Timmy. He and I worked on vehicles for over an hour -- together! With no TV, computer or other distractions. I was VERY impressed with Timmy's attention span and even more impressed with his dexterity. Those beads are LITTLE....



...and they get everywhere. I bumped a tray full of beads earlier today and spilled them all over our living room! I was able to gather up most of them, the rest can come up when I vacuum.

As for Jake, he was less impressed. To be honest, not many things are impressing him right now. He used to be so happy about everything. Now he's blase', unless it's Star Wars...

Anyway, between Timmy and me, we've made a bunch of items...he's really enjoying it! Mostly I will outline a particular color -- such as the bottom of the sailboat -- and he fills in the rest.



After school today, Jake, Timmy and I made this satellite (Jake's choice). We downloaded the pattern from the website. Jake did the body of the satellite, Timmy and I did the solar panels. We ran out of gray beads.



So there's my shameless pitch -- Perler Beads are quite cool, and I'm pleased to have found an activity that's commanding Timmy's attention besides TV and Webkinz on the computer.

PixO-monium!

The boys received PixOs starter kits from Grammy Vollmer for Christmas. It was something they wanted, they asked her for it and she delivered! Thanks Grammy! The boys love it!

For those who might not remember, Pixos are a "new formula" of craft bead developed in response to the massive Aqua Dots Recall that took place in fall 2007, thus nixing one of the things Jacob was asking Santa Claus for last year!

I honestly don't know what the difference is, but whatever. The boys were very excited to open up their sets and get to work!

As you've heard me describe with both Moon Sand and Perler Beads, I get a bit particular about the mess-factor when it comes to these crafts. Pixo beads are in the same category -- the beads are VERY small (the size of plastic BBs) and you need some incredible dexterity to manage them. They do get everywhere -- but unlike Moon Sand, they vacuum up quite easily. I have to suck up my neat-freakiness for the good of happy, creatively engaged kids.

Pixos comes with an applicator pen. You fill the pen with the beads, and then apply the beads to the plastic template board with the gentle touch of your forefinger. So simple!

Not so simple.

So here's Timmy with his applicator pen working on a kitten pattern.

From 2008 12 27 TimmyPixos

See that fat pen? One has to FILL the pen. You have to unscrew the red top to the pen, and then get the Pixo beads into one of the 4 chambers. Unlike the one shown on the website, this pen has 4 chambers, which you can use to have 4 colors going at once. This took some serious precision, even with the funnel attachment you can use, to get the beads into the pen.

Timmy's pen seemed to work fine. You line up the tip of the pen, depress a button, and it deposits a bead in the location of your choosing. There's a certain finesse to putting the pen up against the template just right, otherwise the bead misses the correct location on the template and bounces elsewhere: into another location on the template, on the floor, into the heater vent, etc.

Unfortunately, Jacob's pen seems much pickier. The pen has to be oriented with one of the 4 chambers perfectly for the beads to come out when you press the button. It was frustrating for me, so for those who know how, um, particular Jacob is, just imagine his reaction! But we got it working and he was able to do some simple patterns.

I'd estimate that for each of the patterns we have, you need to fill the pen at least twice, and it depends on which colors you choose to fill the chambers with.

So -- now that we've filled the template with the beads in the pattern we want, it's time to "fix" the pattern in place with water.

This is pretty straightforward: the starter kit includes cute little spray bottles, which the boys wasted no time filling with water from the dog bowl and then using on each other.

Once we made the appropriate corrections and the boys served out their time outs, we followed the directions: "Evenly spray your complete design".

How much spray? Not enough spray, the beads don't all seal together. Too much spray, and it takes forever to dry. So I don't know the answer to this, except that an adult should oversee the spraying.

Here's Timmy's completed kitten.

From 2008 12 27 TimmyPixos

I was very impressed (again) at how well he did with this project. And once again, Jacob was less patient with this project, but he did a small set of patterns that are on the pink-colored template on the picture below.

From 2008 12 27 TimmyPixos

Straight out of the instructions: "NOTE: Store unused PixOs(TM) in a cool dry environment".

Heed this warning! When you're spraying your pattern, you need to keep the water away from any loose beads, or the applicator pen. Needless to say that the water makes the beads sticky, and the loose beads will congeal together if left out in moisture. That also means if you're in a humid environment, they might not cooperate so well. Thankfully, it's bone dry here right now so that's not an issue.

The instructions claim that the PixOs design will be ready in about 10 minutes, but I don't believe that. Of course the drying time depends on how much you "evenly" sprayed your design, and the ambient humidity. It's taking about 1/2 hour here. That seems a long time for a 3 year old to wait for the fruits of his labors. At least with Perler beads Timmy only has to wait for me to iron his design together and then wait for it to cool, less than 5 minutes!

When all's said and done, you have this cute little kitten. Like the Perler beads, you have this plastic toy that you can do with as you please. Unfortunately, Timmy's kitten fell apart pretty quickly. Just trying to hold it upright, gravity kicked it and the kitten slumped over and the beads started separating.

But simply put the parts back on the template and hit with another shot of water and it fuses back together in about 1/2 hour.

I've come across some other reviews from folks whose kids also received these sets for Christmas, and I have to admit, mine is among the most polite of those I've read so far. Timmy and Jacob seem to enjoy this kit pretty well, so as long as you are flexible with the mess the beads can make, and make sure to avoid getting the beads wet until you're absolutely ready.

One of the reviews even says "stick with Perler beads". After Jacob spilling a tray of about 3000 Perler beads this afternoon, I'm even getting frustrated with the Perler beads!