Sandbox for kiddos or gravel pit?

[happydog]

Do you have opinions on either? We're in the process of putting in a sandbox. At the last minute I'm wondering if pea gravel would be a better choice than sand. Sand is awfully messy when they track it in. Pea gravel isn't going to cling to their clothes and fill their shoes, spilling out all over the laundry room floor. On the other hand, is it as much fun to play with? My boy loves to play in sand but I've never seen a gravel pit in real life.

[CIW]

Which ever you choose, put a cover on it. The local cat population will come to see it as their latrene.
From personal experience in the snadbox. Gravel doesn't pack and make structures as well as sand does. Gravel is easier to pickup with your favorie John Deere articulating loader.
During those tender young years how much sand was in and on my clothing didn't seem to enter into my thoughts. My little sister did unknowingly have a solution for the problem. She would assume the au natural. Always kept her mud boots on though.

[Ardie/WI]

Sand, with a cover.

[Raymond James]

Two of those plastic pools one small to put the sand in and the other to be the cover. . Dig out a place for the pool to set down into put a couple of small drain holes in it. Fill with sand Doesn't have to be completely full.
Set the other on top to cover.

Put it some distance away from house not real far but far enough that as they walk inside they loose much of the sand. Try and teach them to brush it off and keep all the sand together.

Do you have or need an outdoor shower? Put one in between sand box and house. Pallet with a rubber mat, maybe something for privacy (bushes/ screens /curtain), garden hose with a gentile spray nozzle and somewhere to hang it (tree/pole). Outdoor showers are great to wash off garden soil and leave the dirt outside.

[nostawmama]

I would go with sand as pea gravel would pose a choking hazard for my youngest. And definately a cover to keep out the cats.

[Cabin Fever]

Sand box with a cover. A cover meaning a playhouse with a door and roof and window screening for walls.

[Ohio dreamer]

When we bought our house the play area had pea gravel. When our son was born we bought a sandbox and filled it with sand. He had more fun playing in the gravel with his trucks. But he did use the sand some, too. Either will be hours of fun.....but gravel is SO MUCH less messy (and less interesting for the neighbor cats....at least they didn't "use" ours.....but they loved the sand.

[Ruby]

Don't know how hot the sun is where you live, but here the pea gravel would get very hot in the sun. I remember when I was a kid, (like 60 yrs. ago) my brother and I would spend hours outside by the edge of the house playing in the sand. Making roads in the sand and making sand cakes. That would be very hard to do in pea gravel.

[Bearfootfarm]

I'd do a sandbox with a cover, with the idea of truning it into a nice raised bed garden when they outgrow it, which won't be all that long

[Wendy]

My kids practically lived in the sandbox when they were small. Some of them still play in it yet. Ours doesn't have a cover. The cats tend to use my flowerbed as their litterbox & not the sand. When we were little I can remember picking out the cat poop & tossing it aside & going on playing.

[fordson major]

what ever you get is going to migrate to the house at some point and in some quantity. sand you can vac up and will not hurt when you step on it in sock/bare feet, pea stone will hurt almost as bad as lego!! we had an area to play in that was clay subsoil with smallish rocks made all kinds of fences and buildings out of the rocks, some came home as they had fossils or minerals or interesting shapes. our kids did the same!!

[Yvonne's hubby]

I am wondering why kids need such a "controlled" environment to play in? When I was a lad we had plain old dirt... and lots of it. It was great stuff for making roads, farms, mudpies, throwing at each other, digging foxholes etc. In the summer we also had water... the irrigation ditches provided great places to swim, float our home made boats in, have all sorts of fun. A sand box, gravel pit would have been extremely confining for us boys.

[Marcia in MT]

We had hours and days of fun playing in the neighbors' sand box! So much so, that my brother built one just like it when his kids were born.

For one thing, it was BIG: at least 8' x 8'. It had a ledge all around the edge, and was filled with sharp sand, not the smooth stuff -- sharp/builders' sand will hold a shape when molded, but the smooth stuff won't.

We built Marble Mounds. Pack moist sand into a mound, as large as you can make it (3' wide x 3' or 4' high, as I remember). This needs to be packed tight! Then take a hoe or broom, and punch holes at various angles through the mound. Punch a very short hole down through the top; connect some of the outside holes to others by adding sand ramps around the outside. Take one of those big shooter marbles and drop it down the top hole. The fun is seeing what tunnels connect, where the marble will come out, how things change as the marble wears new paths through the mound.

As I recall, each mound would last 2 or 3 days before we had to take it down and start all over again.

[Joshie]

Both are going to make a mess. Sand is more fun because you can build sand castles; you cannot do that with pea gravel. Whatever you do, cover it. A cover won't keep out the bugs but it will keep the cats from having a new litter box.

[Joshie]

Originally Posted by Yvonne's hubby

I am wondering why kids need such a "controlled" environment to play in? When I was a lad we had plain old dirt... and lots of it. It was great stuff for making roads, farms, mudpies, throwing at each other, digging foxholes etc. In the summer we also had water... the irrigation ditches provided great places to swim, float our home made boats in, have all sorts of fun. A sand box, gravel pit would have been extremely confining for us boys.

We moved out here when DD was 11. We set up a sandbox here because she still like it. Heck, she just yesterday checked it out to see if it was still good. She's 15 and still likes the texture.

Our suburban community spread cinders instead of salt during the snow season. Because of our home's location cinders collected at the top of our drive. DD loved sitting on the drive and on the curb so she could play in the rocky stuff.

We loved making mud pies and sneaking off into the woody/weedy areas around the train tracks at the front of Grandma's property. I cannot tell you how many times we scrounged up a dime to buy Jiffy Pop popcorn to pop it over a fire we burned without adult knowledge. In case anybody is wondering, Jiffy Pop doesn't pop well over an open flame. What little bit of it that pops gets burnt as all gets out.

I think we provide too many toys. I wish I had made my kids play the same way we did. We never dared tell Mom we were bored because she'd find something for us to do. We lived in town and weren't allowed to venture too far but when we went out to Grandma's we were able to get into all sorts of trouble. Whether at home or at Grandma's adults saw us at lunch, dinner, and bedtime but little time between.

[Daybright]

I would vote for sand. I always liked playing in sand as a kid -- for that matter, whenever we make it to a beach, you will surely still find my husband and me making sand castles. We have a baby on the way now, and I am thinking about putting in a sandbox for her when she gets a little bigger.

I never had gravel pits to play in as a kid, so I can't speak from experience, but I feel like I would have found it irritating that it would not hold together.