History of the sandbox and playground!
started with piles of sand dumped into German ghettos to give street urchins productive play spaces
from Nora Archibald Smith's 1896
The Republic of Childhood which devotes a whole chapter to 'sand work', and proposes larger sand installations:
"If the authorities should order a sand heap put in every back yard of
our cities, being especially careful not to neglect the tiny inclosures
around which the very poor hive together, there would be less
vagabondage and less youthful ruffianism. The child must needs be busy,
and lacking legitimate means of occupation he will seek out those that
are unlawful.
In Germany...one of the beautiful acts of the Empress Frederick...was
to set apart certain portions of all public parks for play-grounds, with
sand hills upon them, for the little children. Any one who has
frequented the parks of the larger German cities knows what an
attractive picture the children make in their busy, happy play of
digging and packing and building in the easily moulded soil.
The Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus in Berlin, of which Frau Schrader is the
leading spirit, is provided with a most beautiful sand garden shaded by
trees, over which all visiting kindergartners rhapsodize. This is no
petty box of sand such as we in America think ourselves fortunate in
possessing, but a " truly " garden, as the children say, where there are
glorious heaps of sand in which they can dig with their little shovels,
and which they can carry about and load and unload in their toy
carts..into this garden of Eden we can usher the little ones, and,
provided with iron spoons, toy shovels, one or two old pails and pans
and some muffin rings and scallop-tins for cake-baking, they will amuse
themselves quietly and happily for hours."
... read more
here
