For the first time, the famous science fiction writer Herbert Wells mentioned sand therapy. Margaret Lowenfeld, an English psychologist, combined the figures described in Wells's book with water and sand. Sand therapy took shape in a separate psychotherapeutic direction in the 50s of the XX century thanks to the child psychotherapist Dora Kalff.
Sand therapy has proven to be effective in dealing with psychosomatic disorders, traumatic experiences, in situations where communication difficulties and internal contradictions arise. For children, a tray of sand becomes a reliable friend in the fight against passivity, anxiety, feelings of isolation, school difficulties of an emotional nature.
Lesson structure
Before setting out to build sand castles and palaces, explain to your child that you can draw or build something on the sand. If the design requires it, water can be added to the sand. Offer your child a set of small figures, let him choose the necessary elements on his own. All instructions can be summed up in a few words "Build a city of the future" or "Build a fairy-tale world."
Unlike adults, children's paintings are rarely static. In the process of building a fairy-tale world, the child will not only construct the necessary buildings, but also act out scenes, voice the characters. Sand therapy is able to "talk" even the most silent babies who have difficulties in forming their thoughts.
After completing the construction, invite your child to give a name to the resulting masterpiece and tell a little about it. If in the first lessons the child is shy or finds it difficult to tell, do not insist. At the end, ask the child to disassemble the structure on his own, because next time it will be a completely different picture of the world. You can talk about the first results after conducting a course of ten sessions regularly 1-2 times a week.
Sand therapy materials
For individual lessons, a wooden waterproof box measuring 50x70x8 cm is used. The dimensions were chosen not by chance and correspond to the child's visual perception field, allow you to fully cover him with a glance. The inner surface must be painted blue, which creates strong associations with infinity and continuation. Fill 2/3 of the volume of the box, called a "tray" in the language of psychologists, with calcined and sifted sand.
For classes, they use figures that are found in the world around, no more than 8 cm high. The main groups are formed from human characters, animals, buildings, machines, plants, natural material (shells, twigs, stones), fairy-tale heroes, household utensils and religious items.
