Homeschooling Camp I - Sandcastles

We finally made it to the camp and quickly unloaded the van contents into our cabin. The children promptly vanished and found new and old friends. A Sand Castle competition was arranged for the first afternoon's activities and somehow myself and one of the other mums were made judges. We had three boxes of chocolate to award as prizes. We decided to award a prize for the best Traditional, Artistic and Tenacious sand castles. The first two weren't too hard to select, but the third had a number of groups of children in the running. This first photo shows one of the boys in James' group trying to resurrect their castle after a rather devastating wave.
All that remained was the Cathedral they had built on the lonely mound of sand. So the boys started building even bigger walls around the Cathedral to try again. I don't know if James' efforts at turning back the waves made a difference but it didn't stop him trying. (Click on the photo for more details)
Meanwhile Eric's group of boys started their castle for the 4th (!) time. The first three were washed away to steady groans.
But their castle did survive in time for the judging and won the most tenacious category. Here they are showing off their creation.
The older children/young adults started off spectacularly with several spades and lots of assistants. They achieved a mound of sand about 5 feet high. Then they were distracted by other things and so ended up with just a pile of sand.
"Why didn't we get anything?" one of the young adults asked on the awards night.
"A pile of sand didn't qualify for the traditional or artistic categories and you all eventually gave up and went swimming so it didn't qualify for tenacious either."
"Well, there is that..." he replied.
So next time we will do better. There is always next time.