Rock, Water, Kids

For a cheap $7, we picked up this clam shell sandbox/pool on a random trip to Walmart.

Though tiny, I knew my kids would have a great time splashing/throwing rocks at each other in the evenings.  Although meant for sand, I really despised the idea of kids covered in sand, sand in diapers, sand all over the house, etc.  Taking a hint from other blogs, I decided to use pea gravel.  True, it doesn't make castles, but my kids just want to dig and put rocks on each other's heads, so I thought it was just fine.

Three bags of this was under $12, so this project was going pretty well for me.  Now pea gravel is pretty dirty already, and I wanted to give it a good rinse to get what loose sandy materials off of it I could.  I didn't have a big rinsing container or giant colander, but I did have a shell pool!

First, I took a drill and put a ton of 3/16th holes in the bottom of what was going to end up being the rock side.

Not sure where this line across the photo comes in, but hopefully you can see all the holes

 Next, I dumped in two bags of rocks (that seemed to make it deep enough, and now I have some in reserve to replace all the ones that are being dumped on the ground) and then Avery helped me hose them all down while Dash pretended not to care.

Once the water was in we (well, really I because at this point, Avery had lost interest) pushed the rocks around in the water to loosen up any dirt.  I was please to see the water draining out of the holes in the bottom.

And, not that my kids waited for it all to dry, but it did eventually dry.  All that was left was to throw a bath mat in the pool side, fill er up, and let them go nuts.  And by "go nuts" I mean Avery gets naked and hides.

Here's the finished project - they love it, with our without the water part.  Our new favorite game is to manually transfer rocks from one part to another.  For less than $20, I can't complain!