Digger Trucks! (Indoor "dirt")

The temperature dipped down again, after a glorious spring day yesterday. I was not in the mood to make a trek to the park, but my little guy wanted to play with his "digger trucks" in the dirt.

Is there a way to simulate dirt indoors? You bet there is!

I thought it would make for some (slightly) messy fun to dump some sugar on a tray, and let his backhoe, dump truck, etc. go to work. And wouldn't you know it, the novelty of this idea held his attention for at least an hour! I organized my home office in the time he spent contentedly playing at the table.

If you try this:

--decide ahead of time if you mind getting out the vacuum cleaner afterwards to clean up. He did a great job of trying to keep the sugar contained, but there's no avoiding some spills. If you want to keep it neater, use something that's easier to sweep up, like rice.

--find a fairly large cookie sheet, lid, tray or other container with sides, and put something under it so it doesn't scoot around.

--find a little measuring spoon or other tiny scoop to help pick up the sugar and plop it in the trucks.

Next time I'm going to experiment with rice, cereal, etc. I don't want to waste too much food with this, but a cup of sugar is pretty cheap!  Have fun!