How I did it: We were on vacation this August to the Oregon coast. We traveled there with another couple and their 2 small children. It was a perfect chance for everyone to build a huge sandcastle town.
We built a main sandcastle- nearly 3 feet tall! We built an inner "keep" and moat. 2 bridges spanned the moat where you could enter another city of buildings, rolling hills and farm areas. It was awesome!
Complete strangers strolling the beach took pictures of our progress (we kept at it for several hours- until the tide was too far out to reach the water to solidify our creations).
When the kiddo's (age 8, 5, and 3) were tired of "helping" and the adults were a tad sunburned- we headed in to the resort. Before we even left the sand- an entire family went in and stomped, body slammed, and crushed our entire sand city. Our HOURS of labor and creativitiy dashed by people who couldn't take the time to build their own?!?! Beware!

Lessons & tips: Complete strangers enjoy:

• taking pictures of others sandcastle building accomplishments
  
• crushing and ruining others hard work at sandcastle building

• wear sunscreen on parts you don't think about while hunched over in your building endeavors
  
• little kids get bored with the building process while it still entertains the adults

Resources: We bought a kit from Amazon that included sand molds that the littlest ones could easily fill and help build with the rest of us. It included a brick mold, castle turret mold, bridge mold, and a couple sieves and buckets. It was a great $20 to spend that helped build a fantastic sand city in one afternoon.

Oct 22, 2008, 07:19PM PDT | 0 comments