Creative Sand Sculpting Ideas For Families Looking To Spend Quality Time At The Beach
August 10, 2012 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis There is still a solid month’s worth of weekends for the beach and even more than that if you have vacation days, so there’s still plenty of opportunity to spend quality time together with the kids making great memories that can last a lifetime.
Renaissance sand castle. Photo courtesy of Sand Masters.
A great way to spend some time together at the beach is building sand sculptures. Parents can help kids build some really cool things like castles, fancy starfish, butterflies, flowers, turtles, or anything else they can imagine.
Right now on television, there are cool shows like Sand Masters making amazing things like menageries of animal displays, 10 ft. tall grand castles, and other displays. I’m not talking about making any thing that extravagant, but with some basic knowledge, you can make some really cool creations and the kids can help.
Sand Masters and other sites on the web have some really easy to understand tips for making your creations. All you need are some basic tools and knowledge and you are all set. Sand Masters has some great advice for tools that can be modified from want you have at home.
For your top 10 basic tools and demonstrating how to use them by making a dolphin, Sand Masters recommends:
- Bottomless buckets.
- Shovels.
- Square trowels (or anything with a straight side.)
- Pool trowels (or anything with a straight side.)
- Palette knives (or any other knives you have at home.)
- Butter knives.
- Popsicle sticks (optional).
- Spoons.
- Paint brushes (for brushing off extra sand and giving a polished finish.)
- Straws (for blowing and creating finer details.)
Sand Masters also has a great tutorial about how to ‘Build A Sand Fort.”
There are also a lot of other places on the web that have similar great information that you can print out and take with you to the beach. A great site is Sand Fu that has an introductory section, which includes information about what’s the best kind of sand to use when building your masterpieces.