Painting a Sandbox

For Levi's birthday present this year we decided to get him a sandbox. Now, granted, we are two months later but we are finally getting to it. The sandbox is going to be made out of a tractor tire that Landon retrieved for us from a vacant lot next to the Greenbelt here in Pocatello. (We had seen it from the walkway next to the river on one of our Sunday walks. It was perfect so Landon and Eric went and retrieved it for us.)

When I was little we had a sandbox from a big tire and I remember it being really hot and always having black all over us. Since I would like to not burn my children and I also would like to not have them all black we had the brilliant idea of painting it. We let the kids get in on the action and it was good family fun.

Receiving instruction from Daddy as to how to paint.

I love doing projects like this because you get to see each of my kids personalities come out. Ellen is very precise and always has to have things done in just the right way. Whenever we do craft projects (or dying eggs for that matter) she is always very careful to not get herself messy. Things around her yes, but her actual person usual stays pretty clean. She loved getting to help us paint. We let her pick out the color. She chose blue because it is the sky. She wants to go back and paint pictures of the grass and the sun and houses on it. Very precise with a plan....

Trevor on the other hand is very different from his sister. When it comes to projects it is all about getting it done. No matter how messy, and painting the sandbox was no exception. Once we gave him his instructions he went right to work.

It is kind of hard to see in this picture, but he would pile his paintbrush full of as much paint as he could and then quickly spread it all over the tire. Landon and I found that we didn't even need to load up our own brushes if we just followed him. We gave him instructions of painting all of the black and he worked with great determination to get every last inch of black covered. Such determination left him also covered with paint. He had it on the back of his calf, all over his feet, up his arms, and splattered all over his hair and face. Not too big of a deal except that we were using oil based paint. He basically had to get a mineral spirits bath after we were done. He, also, enjoyed every minute of it.


I loved getting the kids involved with this project. It might have made it a little more work trying to reign them in but it could not have been more fun to be out there working as a family. Now I can't wait for the second phase to begin!