Our weekly sensory sandbox themes have been a huge success here this spring. We started off the week with a Pool Party themed sensory sandbox (see post for details: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/06/sensory-sandbox-pool-party.html), however it didn't make it past a couple of days. The Pool Party was replaced with a quite simple game I titled "Digging for Gold." I simply buried pennies in the sand and had the kids dig for them with shovels, their hands, and even their feet. This game kept them entertained for over an hour--they kept burying and finding the pennies over and over again.
Every time they uncovered a penny, the kids shouted "I found one! I found one!"
This was well worth the two seconds it took me to clean out my spare change and cover it with sand! I had kids ages (almost) 2 to 6 that were all easily able (and quite excited) to participate in this game. I will definitely be doing more activities like this throughout the summer.