(March 2008 - Grapevine, Texas) - It's been a long winter. Kids across the country are so ready to hit the great outdoors! New Crayola play sand answers the call to "Get Out and Play!" with the introduction of COLOR to the sandbox. This ultra-high quality play sand comes in four dynamic colors, sure to supercharge a variety senses in any sandbox.

Imagine your child's sandbox filled with the softest sand available that delights visually in vibrant hues of pink, purple, blue and green. With the addition of Crayola play sand, not only is the sandbox transformed into a colorful bed of creativity, the sheer smooth texture and flow of the sand delights tactile senses of all ages. Early childhood development experts agree that sand play is one of the most important and beneficial activities for children to engage in to develop a wide variety of motor, spatial and social skills.

"Sand play is open-ended and allows children the freedom to build and strengthen development of their small and large muscle motor skills, eye-hand coordination, mathematical, vocabulary and socialization skills," said Cheri Sterman, director of child development, Crayola. "Now, the benefits of sandplay are taken to a new dimension with the addition of color. It's creative learning driven solely by imagination and no batteries nor game pod needed."

There are few things in life that kids really have control over. But let them loose in a sandbox and they become rulers of their own universe - carving out roads and ditches, driving trucks into gullies and loading up dumpsters, buckets and containers of sensory pleasing - and colorful - sand!

According to statistics, one in three children in the United States falls into a category of obesity. With the unending plethora of video and computer games and lack of activity it's no wonder the mantra among childhood development experts (and the media) is to "Get Out and Play!" One fantastic play area that offers so much is as simple as the backyard sandbox.

Certain beaches and sand dunes create mysterious sounds that scientists still don't completely understand. They sing, whistle, boom, bark and even at times sound like a frog.

There's not a source on Bermuda for quartz, yet about ten percent of Bermuda's beach sand is quartz. Geologist Bruce Rueger has found the answer. It has been dropped out of the tail end of birds flying south. They carry grains in their crops (part of their throats) to help with digestion. (Bermuda lies smack in the middle of a major migratory route.)

One grain of sand contains as many atoms as there are grains of sand on a beach!

Sandy soils are excellent for growing watermelons, peaches and peanuts!

The world's tallest sandcastle measured 29.25 feet (8.91m) high and was completed on June 30, 2003 by the Parkfest Sandcastle Committee in Falmouth, Maine.

Normally you would expect to see sand dunes in the desert, but there are sand dunes in Saskatchewan! In northwest Saskatchewan there are dune fields stretching for about 100 km along the south shore of Lake Athabasca. The dune fields are one of the most northerly in the world. The Athabasca Sand Dunes have 10 plants that grow nowhere else in the world. Travel by air is required to get to the park. Also, in southwestern Saskatchewan there are the Great Sand Hills with sand dunes of up to 25 meters high.

The tallest sand dune in America is in Great Sand Dunes National Monument outside of Alamosa. This bizarre 46,000 acre landscape of 700 feet sand peaks was the creation of ocean waters and wind more than one million years ago.

White Sands National Monument is a desert, not of sand but of gleaming white gypsum crystals.

The soft sand that we sink into on the beach is actually rock. Sand is what a rock becomes after years of being worn down by rivers. Years of sea waves crashing against huge rocks and cliffs makes rocks break into small particles and then ultimately they end up as sand. The colours of sand - yellow, red, grey and black are dependent upon the kind of rock it comes from. Sometimes, desert sand is carried by winds across great distances to seasides which increases the amount of sand in the sea.

Molecularly speaking, water is actually much drier than sand.

Barking Sands Beach on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is known for its unusual sand that squeaks or "barks like a dog". The dry sand grains emit an eerie sound when rubbed with bare feet.

The typical peanut butter and jelly sandwich eaten on the beach contains over 7,000 grains of sand!

The amazingly accurate sand hourglass replaced water clocks in Ancient Egypt. Sand hourglasses are still used today for timing boiled eggs and in children's board games.

Inside the main pyramid at the Nima Sand Museum in Kotoga Beach Japan stands the world's largest hourglass, five meters high and 1 meter in diameter. One ton of sand (whose millions of grains have been sorted to make sure each one is about 0.13 millimeters) flows from the upper bulb to the lower bulb. The so-called "sand calendar" is carefully turned over by a group of townspeople at twelve midnight on the last day of every year. It takes exactly one year for all the sand to flow through, which is why this hourglass is called the "one year sand clock". The sand has continuously flowed through the nozzle (0.85mm diameter) ever since the museum opened.

The sand on the coast of Namibia (in southwest Africa) is definitely worth sifting. It contains diamonds!

Guam, green sand! Yes, it really is green sand. It is strange to walk on a green beach and there are very few green sand beaches in the world. One is on the island of Guam and another is found on the big island of Hawaii (2 hour hike from South Point). The beach formed by the erosion and concentration of olivine crystals derived from a surrounding lava cone. Olivine is a mineral commonly found in basalt lava. The waves removed the lighter grains of sand leaving the denser olivine crystals behind to form the beach.

The Sandman, a fictional character yet a popular figure in Western folklore brings good sleep and dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto the eyes of children. Mr. Sandman" is a popular song written by Pat Ballard and published in 1954. The song's lyrics convey a request that "Mr. Sandman bring me a dream". The word "dream" evidently referring to a significant other, despite the traditional association of the folkloric figure with literal dreams. The recorded version by The Chordettes reached #1 on the Billboard United States charts in 1954.

In the making of that perfect pearl, there is a commonly held belief that a grain of sand acts as the irritant which is in fact rarely the case.