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Who wants to pack up the car and drive to the beach when you can bring the sand and water right to your backyard for endless fun all summer long?
The Step2 Dino Dig Sand & Water Table is your ticket to summertime fun and relaxation with your kids. The durable, two-in-one activity table encourages creative play and fosters the development of social skills, interactive play, and sharing.
Set up to strengthen social skills
Water and sand tables help children build important skills for social interaction, like taking turns playing on different sides of the table or experimenting with role play as they engage in cooperative play together.
It's a little bit wider than similar tables, which means there is more real estate for each of your twins to comfortably explore both the water and sand areas without being cramped.
It's a small, but important differentiating detail—because when you're in close quarters with your counterpart, it can lead to struggles over scoop cups and toys, which sucks all the fun out of sensory time.
Designed for developmental exploration
This dinosaur-themed activity set is fantastically fun and well-designed for sensory play and developmental learning.
Having both water and sand stations side by side allows your twins to double-down on conducting their very important experiments. They can test how different textures and temperatures feel in their hands, comparing how slippery, warm and slick water differs from coarse, cold, and gritty sand.
They can investigate various sights, sounds, and feelings and begin to understand how different movements actively affect their play.
Splashing in the water simultaneously engages multiple senses and encourages exploration, and manipulating the sand into varying shapes presents an opportunity to see and feel how things change with each movement.
The two-sided play table comes with four colorful dinosaurs, two bright scooping cups, and a shovel / rake combination tool for the sand area.
Imagination integration
The included sand cover, which helps keep the sand clean and dry and can also double as toy storage, is very delightfully designed to look like a volcano, which further adds to the prehistoric backdrop for your toddlers' imaginative play.
The lid even has pathways incorporated into it for "lava" (read: water, transformed by the power of your imagination) to flow downwards once it's scooped into the top of the volcano.
Scooping and pouring the sand and water into the different containers helps your little ones work on developing their hand-eye coordination, physical dexterity, and fine motor skills as they use the toys and accessories to play.
They will be able to witness the difference between dumping a tidal wave of water out of the solid scoop versus the drizzling rainfall that occurs when lifting the scoop that has holes integrated into it.
Stimulating STEM learning
Playing with sand and water gives kids an opportunity to be introduced to early physics concepts, like motion and flowing.
This activity table by Step2 teaches kids about cause and effect, intertwining learning and creative play, as your twins make predictions about what will happen when they move sand or water to a certain spot.
The sand pit can be set up for dino digs, and if you're feeling sneaky, you can hide small toys in the sand for your kids to dig up while they're playing.
The water area works as a watering hole for the dinosaurs, who can spray water out of their mouths when their tummies are pinched to suck the water in and then squeezed to force it out.
The palm tree dividing the two sides of the table is just begging to have water or sand piled on top of its fronds, so your little ones can discover how water droplets splash down or sand globs drop below when too many grains pile up.
Quick and easy clean-up
Want a breeze of a clean-up while you enjoy the breeze outdoors with your twins? When playtime is over, just pull the plug to drain the water in a few seconds.
When it's time to play again, just give the surface a quick wipe down before adding the water, and it's ready to roll back in time to when the dinosaurs ruled the realm.
Or, if you're wanting to use the table indoors...but you're worried about the mess factor, you can try putting dried pasta or rice into the bins instead.
Or, if you're wanting to use the table indoors, say, during the winter months or when it's gloomy out, but you're worried about the mess factor, you can try putting dried pasta or rice into the bins instead.
That way, your twins get the sensory experience without you wondering how much water you'll be wiping off of the floor when they're done having fun.
The nitty gritty details
This plastic table features a double-walled construction, so it's built to last through many seasons of play with your rough-and-tumble toddlers. You won't need to worry about anything chipping, fading, or cracking.
The basin holds up to four gallons (just over 15 liters) of water and 20 pounds of sand. Assembled, the table is 30 inches high, 29.5 inches wide, and 33 inches deep.
Step2 Dino Dig Sand & Water Table
This is the Step2 Dino Dig Sand & Water Table. It has two separate containers you can fill with water and sand for the ultimate summer fun sensory station for your twins.
If you're trying to decide which sand is best to bolster creativity in this table, consider Kinetic Sand. It's a sensory sand that can be molded into shapes and sticks to itself and not your kiddos, which makes clean-up that much easier once they're done digging around and creating works of art.
Kinetic Sand
This is a 3.25-pound bag of Kinetic Sand. Its larger grains of sand can be shaped and molded. It sticks to itself, making clean-up a breeze. Six bags will fill the sand area in the Step2 Dino Dig Sand & Water Table completely.
Bring the beach to your backyard
Chances are quite low that you'll be hitting the beach every single day this summer with your littles, but chances are high that you don't need to worry about that if you make this dual activity table a fixture in your backyard oasis.
The sand and water table makes it easy to have endless fun all summer long—I should know, my twins have been LOVING this table since they got it last year. We used it on repeat all last summer, and then it had to be set up throughout the winter months indoors, with balls and other toys filling the compartments, for sensory playtime.
Now that it's getting to be gorgeous outside again, we've got our sand and water set-up ready to rock in the backyard, and we haven't missed a day of fun yet.
What's your favorite way to incorporate interactive, sensory play in the summertime? Let us know in the Comments section below.
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