Here's a smart tip from Parenthacks: turn a wheeled under-bed storage box into a mobile, lidded sandbox that you can roll into the garage on rainy days and out into the yard on nice ones:
My husband came up with a great idea for a small sandbox: an under-the-bed storage container. This container has a hinged top but the hinge broke so I put it in the garage for another day. My husband filled it 1/2 way with play sand and our daughter loves it. We can play with sand in the garage (if it is raining outside), on the back porch or take it to Grandma's for the afternoon. When we are done we just put the top over it and slide it under the stand that holds the yard tools or under the workbench.
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cool folks, but those plastics become brittle faster than you'd expect...
hope you've got a good vac!
:)
sand lego
I can has access?
Helps to avoid the other big problem with outdoor sandboxes as well.
Cats.
You can scatter some unwrapped Tootsie Rolls in the sand for all the hilarity of an unexpected discovery and none of the cat poop. Then, while the kids are all, like, totally grossed out and stuff and going all "OMG!!" you can pick one up, dust off the sand, and really freak 'em out by trying a bite. The look on their faces makes a great photo op.
oh, it thought I was inserting code and parsed it.
replace the sand with legos and its also a good idea. legos outside are awesome.
Sand boxes and cats. Too true.
the secret to good sand box hygiene for cat owners is to get a dog. Hence the origin of the "grin". Though the real grin comes late after you get sloppy doggy kisses and they face away from you.
Mentions "sandbox under bed".
BAD idea. :-p Why?...
1. Kids throw sand (assuming your bed is IN the house) = mess.
2. Cats (instant litter-box) O_O
Why not portable pudding wrestling?
He can has bukkit w/weelz!!!
If only mommy and daddy would get jobs.
Tips for vampires - put wheels on the coffin, roll it under the bed. Fools hunters!
Whoah! A sandbox/under-bed-storage-tub mashup! What a cool homebrew remix of this childhood favorite in a supremely excellent under-bed storage tub mod! Roll your own!
remember the X-Files episode with the inbred family on the pig farm?
Yes, but they didn't keep their mother in a lidded container.
did anyone mention the importance of paying for sterilized play sand? As opposed to using any crap dredged out of the sewage filled local river?
Spare the cholera and spoil the child.
Luxury! In my day ye had to PAY for cholera, put yer name down years in advance! No,no, we lived in a drain and had to make do with the agues, fluxes and palsies, no posh named diseases for us! Bleedin' cholera!
We DREAMED of living in a drain! Why we would (strangling sounds as Internet intervenes directly)
yah, kinda like reciting Vogon poetry - ya have'ta watch your own intestines don't wrap around yer froat
Parenthacks? I got one word for that, ductape! The babysitters friend.
Wow that's awesome. I almost want to make a sandbox for myself.
I saw this in a Parenting or something magazine. There was also a suggestion for filling a water-tight one with water for even more fun in the sun.
In kindergarten, we had play - tables filled with sand and water that could be covered (the water one had a hose hookup to be held over the drain in all school bathrooms for easy emptying.)
I miss those... Uhum... If my posts start getting incoherent, it's certainly not because there is sand in my keyboard.
What we really need is a steampunk version.
A great alternative to sand is rice and beans (kidney and split peas work too). My youngest son used a bin like this as therapy for sensory integration disorder. He loved it. So did his older brother and sister. The rice and beans are much cleaner than sand and easier to clean up as well.
@#24:
That's easy. Just hot-glue some gears to it and spray paint it copper.
@#25:
Lentils work nicely too. The first time I saw lentils (at my vegetarian girlfriend's house), I immediately recognized them from my preschool's tabletop "sand" box.
A friend and his girlfriend used to have a chihuahua and a cat. The Chihuahua woould always be alert for any sound that meant the cat was using the litter box. Why? because this dog loooooved a fresh hot crumbly coated "tootsie roll".
The couple would always try to get to the box before the dog but I was there alone with the beasts one afternoon and, being too curious to stop it, witnessed the spectacle first hand.
The cat had finished her biz. As she and I watched, she looking on with some contempt and an assurance of her superiority in the animal world, the dog ran into the litter box and after digging around a bit emerged triumphant with his steaming prize.
He proudly loafed into the bedroom where he lay on the bed and made a long slow meal of the crunchy coated goody. Despite being an animal lover I was never able to show the dog much love after that event.
I, of course, had only learned of his predilection for tasty fecal snacks AFTER he had licked my face on multiple occassions. I had always found his breath to be rather unpleasant...
I have since learned that dogs will eat their own and other dogs faeces at times, and it still makes me want to be sick when I see it.
Almond Roca for teh pupster.
Makes me want to hack.
I just chain my son to a tree then go to work. Ofcourse I leave bottled water and burry Pringles cans near by while I'm out. But throwing him in a garage and making his grandparent watch him is a new art of poor parenting. Next week let's give our kids drugs and strippers.
drugs and strippers would be a childhood to remember
what? isn't everyone raised in a honky tonk?
Agent 86 has reminded me of the Penny Arcade t-shirt; the roleplaying gamer's avatar hoists a mug and says "I spent my loot on booze and whores!"
Gotta have priorities.
I don't think anybody has pointed this out yet but isn't sand incredibly heavy? Assuming that the parents don't sleep in the garage, wouldn't it be a huge pain in the ass to haul a plastic container with several bags of sand in up the stairs when the kids get bored?
drugs and strippers would be a childhood to remember
You left out guns. And mostly I try to forget.
Dear Fish
any parent who could occupy a toddlers attention for several harmless hours with sand will willingly run up and down a mountain of sand, wearing a gas mask in full desert sun and carrying a hundred pound sandbag across their shoulders while all the while shrieking "Pack Pack Pack!" Just ask them.
plus, wheels
well,ours doesn't have wheels,but my son has one of these...it started out as a "water table",then became a sandbox...then he decided to meld the two notions into one lovely atv "mud" course/saltmarsh plastic animal habitat/futile construction site.maybe we should mix in some lentils...