How to Build a Strong Sand Castle Wall

The walls of a sand castle connect the towers and help form the basic shape of your design. Strong walls also provide support to keep it from falling over. With patience and the right tools, you can build sand castles that can stand on their own.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Plastic knife
• Plastic spoon
• Sand castle tools
• Water bottle

Prepare the Sand to Build Sand Castles

1. Dig a hole down to the water table to get wet sand. If you do this, you can skip to Section 2.

2. Use a shovel to pile sand to the side of the area where you want to build the sand castle, if you can't dig down to the water table.

3. Pour several buckets of water over the sand.

4. Mix the sand with the shovel to ensure that all the sand gets wet.

Make Walls for Sand Castles

5. Soft-pack sand to form the basic shape for sand castles. Start with a pile of sand and press it into the shape you want. Then use a plastic knife, spoon or other sand castle tools to sculpt the walls.

6. Form bricks by molding the sand into shapes, which is called handstacking. To handstack bricks, grab a double handful of sand and jiggle the sand between your hands until you have a basic brick shape.

7. Compress the sand using your fingers or tools until the brick maintains its shape. Lay bricks end to end until you reach the desired length for the wall. To add height, stack the next layer of bricks on top of the previous layer.

8. Use a spray bottle to mist the sand as you work to keep it from drying out and crumbling.

Tips & Warnings

• The more tightly you compress the sand, the stronger the wall becomes.
• Make walls wider at the bottom and narrow at the top to support the sand used to form the walls.