Sand Castle STEM Challenge

You can add a little sand castle science and STEM to any day, whether it's a day at the beach or a day in the classroom! Plus, it fits right in with common preschool themes like Beaches and Oceans!

N. V. Scarfe once said, "The highest form of research is essentially play." This is especially true when it comes to sand.

Sand is one of very few items that both children and professional scientists experiment with! Just a few years ago, investigators sent sand into space so they could see how it behaves when it doesn't have its own weight affecting the experiment!

Kids don't need to go into space to experiment with sand! You can take them to the beach or just buy a bag of play sand at a hardware store. Make some water and plastic buckets available, and you can challenge them to create a sand castle of their own!

Of course, if you go to the beach they will probably challenge themselves. We had one castle built on top of a tunnel that was so deep that a child's hand wouldn't reach all the way through. But, if you had one kiddo on each end of the tunnel, they could touch each other in the middle:

We had several tall towers:

And we had a group project:

The kids loved working together on this one! It started out as one child's castle, but it was taking much longer than she'd hoped. Soon, everyone wanted to help. Four kids, two adults, and three yogurt buckets later, this castle -- complete with a moat -- began to emerge: