Sandcastle Competition - "Out of This World"
May 11, 2015
The annual Sandcastle competition was held on May 11th and was organized by ARCE faculty members Pamalee Brady and Jim Guthrie. The student leader was ARCE student Sydney Patrick. The Sandcastle Competition is an event in which 5th graders from classrooms in the area come to Pismo beach and construct a sand sculpture they have designed with the help of ARCE students and professionals from engineer, design, and construction firms in SLO. The basis of this event starts in the classroom where ARCE students teach the 5th graders about basic engineering and design concepts with the help of Liberal Studies students that are working toward their teaching credentials. We have designed a curriculum of four lessons. The first two lessons teach the students what plan and elevation are and the students explore these definitions through an activity in which they design and build a building out of Linker Cubes in small groups and line all of their buildings up as a classroom into a “skyline.” Next, the students are assigned a section of this skyline and instructed to draw the elevation of this section on grid paper. Lastly, the students line up their elevations to see if it correctly represents the skyline they arranged with their buildings. The last two lessons are focused on the design process and how planners, architects, engineers, and contractors work together to complete a project. They then use these concepts to design a sand sculpture that they eventually build at the beach (this event is the “Sandcastle Competition”). Each classroom builds their own sand sculpture and we have a judge who hands out an award to each classroom based on teamwork, creativeness, and best representation of the theme. This year’s theme was “Out of This World."
Click here for the Mustang News article regarding this year's Sandcastle Competition