Sand castles: what is it, and how to build them?

In summer, when you are on vacation in a seaside resort, you, of course, want to get more vivid impressions, make up your strength, and sometimes - just feel like a seal, lying on the beach. This is easy to realize if you are resting by an adult company or yourself. But when little children rest with you, it will not be enough to just stay on the sand. Such rest quickly bores your child, and he will require to come up with some interesting occupation. To borrow a child, tell and show him how to make sand castles.

This kind of entertainment is very fond of children - you can feel like a real builder using the simplest materials: sand, sea water and your hands. Sand castles are easy to build in the surf zone - where the sand is not dry, but not too wet. To do this, you can use sand molds, or you can build a structure of absolutely fantastic shapes from droplets of sand and water mixture.

To teach the child how to build sand locks in a drip fashion, dig a small well near the wave line, so that the waves do not reach him, but he filled up quickly with water. After that, pick up the sand with your palm, dip it into the water of the well, and when the resulting gruel starts to flow through your fingers, start dropping the foundation of the future castle near the well. So, layer by layer on the "shore" of the well will grow a fragile patterned building. Due to the fact that the size of the drops can be adjusted with your fingers, such locks can be decorated with beautiful openwork turrets. Children are usually quickly involved in such a process, and it is almost impossible to tear them away from such construction.

Do you know that castles made from sand are not just beach children's fun? The matter is that since 1989 in the Canadian small town Harrison Hot Springs the festival of sand sculptures is held. Sand castles, photos of which are presented at this festival, will amaze any imagination. There, this kind of creativity does not seem like a child's play to anyone.

Masters who participate in such competitions, take their work seriously. For example, they accurately calculated the proportions at which the sand and water solution has the best characteristics so that the sand castles are durable. It turned out that the structure was strong, you need to take 8 parts of sand to take 1 part of the water. In addition, they pay special attention to the quality and form of grains of sand - not all sand is suitable for construction. And the very art of making sand sculptures has long been divided into two schools - purists and innovators. The first refuse to use in their sculptures of auxiliary tools, formwork, supporting structures. The latter actively use the engineering approach in the construction of castles.

Suffice it to say that sand castles, built by craftsmen, sometimes reach fifteen meters in height. But, perhaps, after reading this article, you yourself will be interested in such an unusual hobby. And your sand castles will be even higher.