Understanding Child Development

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Free play in sand can make way for free expression and symbolic, useful storytelling.

Sand play therapists take advantage of these stories.

If you hit the beach this summer, you are likely to agree with the folklorist Jay Mechling, who proclaimed sand to be “the perfect plaything for humans.” He had good reason to think so.

For starters, sand feels good and inviting on bare feet. Especially so when it is warmed by the sun. Warm sand yields underfoot; strained through toes, it gives way to footprints that track the beginning of play. Molded and sloped and topped with a beach towel, sand makes for an improvised recliner. Playful engineering invites and enables relaxation and contemplation. There is a purpose to re-creation. Sand will drift, and at the beach, so will your mind.

Dry sand begs to be scooped, lifted, sifted, and streamed out idly through an almost closed fist. Dry sand, made up of minute solids, tiny broken bits of shell and stone, once loosed, behaves almost as a liquid. Sand flows beguilingly through toy plastic funnels. At the beach, gravity powers the dry fluid instructively through toy paddles and wheels.

Sand can be shoveled and ruffled and raked through without consequence. Sand is clean. Sand brushes off. Sand is not mud.

Parents may sink pennies into the sand, making up a story about a buried pirate hoard and launching a treasure hunt. Fancy metal detectors may hunt for stray earrings or lost items or fantasy doubloons if the searcher is in a storytelling mood. Because sand shapes can be so easily made, unmade, and remade, the medium encourages playful invention.

But wet sand yields even more easily to imaginative or impish play. A toe may trace a line in the wet sand, daring a companion to cross. With waves lapping, a stick may leave a temporary........

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