Sandcastle Class Builds Camaraderie

Patrick and Maria Simmsgeiger watch as 15 adults and 20 children shovel sand and mix it with water to form a muddy, volcano-shaped mound on the beach in Dana Point Harbor. With them is their daughter, 19-month-old Alexandria.

“We got here a little late,” Patrick Simmsgeiger says. “I’d take her over there, but there’s not enough room. They’d trample her.”

As Alexandria Simmsgeiger discovered, if you don’t get here early, it may be hard to find a spot in Carolyn Shearer’s sandcastle workshops.

“We got a big turnout today,” says Shearer, who teaches what she jokingly calls “Sandcastles 101” every summer for the Dana Point Harbor Youth and Group Facility. “This always happens when the weather’s nice.”

Shearer, a former preschool teacher who currently works as a crossing guard in Dana Point, is teaching the volcano method of sandcastle-building, in which sand is piled into a cone and sculpted into a desired shape. But instead of building a castle, her students--ranging in age from 19 months to 50-plus years--are constructing a bumper car. For beginners the bumper car is easier, according to Shearer.

Students begin by choosing a spot in the sand and outlining the rough shape of a 6-by-3-foot bumper car. Then the shovelers, mostly adults, begin heaving scoops of sand into a cone-shaped pile. As the pile grows, the water carriers, mostly children, tote buckets of seawater onto the beach and pour them into the growing mound. The fun part is mixing and squishing the sand-and-water mixture with your hands.

“Basically, you build up a mound of sand and pour water all over it,” Shearer says, as she watches her students scurry about, shoveling, pouring and squishing. “Then you keep adding more sand and more water.”

“All right, yeah,” says sandcastle student Rick Caldwell, 10.

“Looking good,” Shearer says, from the sidelines.

When the mound reaches about 3 feet in height, Shearer calls for volunteers to jump on top and pound it down with their feet. Lani Smith, 11, Kyle Chrystal, 7, and Daniel Purisch, 4 1/2, crowd onto the sand heap and hop up and down.

“With everyone here helping, this is simple,” Kyle says.

Once you know the secret, sandcastle building is simple, according to Shearer, who began building sandcastles when she was a kid growing up in La Jolla. Part of the secret is starting with the right kind of pebble-free sand. Then you’ve got to be careful to add just the right amount of water.

It also helps if you’ve got the right equipment. Shearer’s students use eight large, garden-variety shovels to dig and seven plastic pails to carry water. They use cement trowels to smooth and shape the mixture.

Elaine Baker, a Girl Scout leader from Upland, is surprised at the number of tools. “I have always seen sandcastles on the beach and I wondered how they built them,” says Baker, who enrolled in the class with her 7-year-old daughter, Lauren. Baker hopes to learn enough so that she can teach her Scout troop how to sculpt a pile of beach sand.

Kay Clark is taking the class with her 6-year-old grandson, Trevor, who’s beach-boy cool in red plastic sunglasses. “I need a grandchild with me to do this,” says Clark, whose daughter-in-law Lynn LeCount-Clark is also with her. “It’s actually a nice activity for parents and children. Gives them a common thing to do together.”

There are also several father-and-son sandcastle teams, including Bill Varner and his son, Jon, 7, and Larry Curtis and 10-year-old Jeffrey.

Mothers, fathers and grandparents seem as enthusiastic as the children. “We go to the beach a lot, and this is something fun to do with the kids,” says Jeff Fetters, who is here with his entire family--wife, Debbie; son, Chase, 2, and daughter, Crysti, 7.

The class is also fun to teach, Shearer says. “I enjoy working with kids,” she says. “That’s a lot of why I do it.”

On July 23 in Dana Point, Shearer will conduct a weekend sandcastle workshop for 300 Girl Scouts. She’ll also be teaching another workshop at the Youth and Group Facility on July 7. For information, call (714) 661-7122.

In addition to bumper cars, Shearer teaches her students to sculpt whales, turtles, airplanes, dolphins and, of course, castles.

Sandcastle-building is one of those activities you learn by doing, Shearer says. “You don’t need a degree.”