Light Cube: There’s a man on the moon… sand!

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Moon sand is a great tool for playing with on the Light Cube. Place it inside a snugly fitting Light Cube tray to keep it from spilling over the sides.

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Moon sand can be made at home with a few simple ingredients such as cornstarch, sand and water. To learn more about how to make your own moon sand, visit the link here!

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Using our little vials, we asked our friend Ciara to pack the sand into little columns. How long could she get the columns to stand before they slide apart?

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Ciara decided to mold a little snowman out of the moon sand. It actually held really well together, so she added some straws to form the snowman’s arms.

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All done and still standing! The rest of the moon sand looked a lot like snow on the ground being illuminated by the Light Cube underneath.

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Light Cube: Water Beads and Alternatives

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Talking about transparent objects is a great way to move into a sensory exploration of water beads! Although you should reserve this activity for older students, we list some alternatives to water beads that you can experiment with yourself.

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Water beads are found at most outdoors or garden stores. The water beads are used to retain excess water–they swell to a larger size and feel squishy to the touch.

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Pour water into a basin and drop in your water beads. The water beads are very tiny at this point. Leave the beads to soak overnight.

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Once the beads have fully soaked, they will look like squishy marbles!

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Since the water beads can pose a hazard to young children, it is best to leave this activity for older students or you can try some of these alternatives:

Use quick cooking bubble tea BOBA! These little tapioca starch balls are used in novelty bubble teas. Use the quick cook kind, or purchase a premade jar of tapioca balls. Let them soak overnight in warm water with a bit of food dye to color them!

You can also use basil seeds, which swell when stirred into water. Repeat the same process by leaving them to soak in some colorful food dye.

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Use sieves, cups and other cooking tools to experiment with the buoyancy of the water beads.

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Educational Light Cube: Stacking Colorful Cups


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View the dazzling effects of color-changing light on the cube with dollar store variety cups and plastic drinking glasses! Develop fine motor skills through arrangements of stackable cups… see more of this exercise below!


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To start the activity, we first turned on the Light Cube to the ‘white’ setting. Next, we placed a stack of clear-color plastic cups we found at the dollar store on top of the cube. The white brings out the brightness of the clear colors and allows kids to see what inside of the various cups look like when they’re stacked together.


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We next asked our art camper Stephano to take the structure apart. He wanted to see how the individual pieces looked like. Without the bases, these regular dollar variety martini glasses appear quite unique!


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How about we add some more to the mix? Here’s a good look at what happens when you stack multiple cups of the same color together–the colors become extremely saturated, meaning that they are intensified.


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Now let’s add another level of complication to our structure with the bases for the cups.


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Stephano decided to structure the martini glasses in a way that they could easily be stacked together with the bases intact. He decided to place them standing on top of the inside of each cup.


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Next, we amplified the colors of the glasses by changing the cube’s color to red. This created a stark glow throughout the room and helped Stephano focus directly on stacking rather than the colors of the cups.


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Once we turned the cube’s color back to white, we got to see how Stephano had randomly chosen differently-colored cups to stack together. Reflecting back on the activity, Stephano noticed that he wasn’t so worried about which colors he used while he was stacking. Instead he could focus directly on stacking the cups together, and then afterwards enjoyed the surprise when he got to see what combinations of colors he used!


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