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Size and Shape

To determine the size pit you need, wait till your kids get down on their hands and knees—head-to-head, playing together with little cars, model animals, or small dolls. You'll see that two children establish a more or less target-shaped play space: a one-to-three-foot-diameter joint-play circle inside a larger maneuvering circle from four to five feet in diameter. Three children need perhaps six inches more in circle diameter, and four a bit more still. Surrounding the active play space is a ring of floor space where they will keep toys not in active use.

Our sandpit was built when Sam and Martha were two and four years old and requiring constant supervision, so it had to be placed in eye-shot of the kitchen and sun room windows. The best location on our place was in the lawn, just a few steps from the kitchen porch and shaded at midday by a spreading apple tree—an important consideration now that we know how full sun can do serious damage to fair skin.

When the excavation was a foot deep, I encountered a huge apple-tree root that was too big to be grubbed out easily and large enough that I felt the tree needed it more than we need a perfectly round sandpit. So I ended up digging out a kind of peanut shape, a little less than a yard wide and some five feet long. As I watched the kids play in it over the years, I decided that the tree root had put me onto the ideal sandpit shape. The curved oval offered adequately separated independent-play spaces at each end, joint play space in the middle, and a racetrack all around.

Once site, size, and shape are decided, you need to dig the pit, assuring that it will hold shape and drain quickly. Cut out sod in easily moved chunks. You can plug good sod into bare spots in the lawn, or stack it upside-down to molder into the compost. Do not just dump the sod in a split-donut-shaped rim around the pit thinking it will reduce the digging needed, and help keep sand in. I followed that reasoning and can attest that it is impossible to mow the grass on the round hump without scalping the top and stalling the mower. If you do want to rim the pit with sod, pack a sloping fillet of thin sod chunks or top soil around the outer edge to form a gently sloping volcano shape that can be mowed easily.

Dig out the dark-colored top soil and add to compost or scatter in the garden. If it is as good as was the loamy soil under our apple tree, screen out rocks and mix with compost for potting soil. When you get to light-colored subsoil, you may need a square-ended cutting spade or even a mattock or pick to remove it ...but do dig till you get down 18 inches, and two feet is better to let the kids dig really satisfying pits and tunnels.

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