Last summer I discovered one new incredibly interesting and playful activity on a beach - Making a Nest Castle! Spend one relaxing day at the beach and make the most of it! It is a perfect family activity, and I find it to be very useful for children to discover ways of creating one natural piece of art and practice their logic and creativity through playing.

Step 1: Building Material

All you need for a Nest Castle is a clean natural beach - open your eyes and start exploring around you. You will find lots of natural material that you'll use for creating and decorating your art piece. Be creative and make your unique collection of various materials: different type, shapes and colors of sticks, leaves, pebbles, sea grass, shells, feathers, flowers, conifer cone...

Step 2: Base Structure

Once you've made your little collection, let it inspire you and guide you. You will start making a Big Castle Nest, or even a smaller one, that is more fragile. Bigger castle nest I made with one little girl that watched me what I was doing and started helping me, which was very adorable. The smaller one I made while relaxing my mind completely!

Start with sticks as your foundation and shape it. Put the sticks on the sand, and start crossing them, placing them in vertical and horizontal direction, and against each other.

Step 3: Texture

Add other natural material, and think about what you want to get - is it a castle with entrance, with garden, or something more abstract? With more different type of material, you will get very entertaining mix of texture and colors.

Step 4: Decoration

Use the smallest flowers, leaves, pebbles for the end. Decorate your castle with those unique details and be ready to say "I've made it!". Look at your unique creation from each side and admire it :)