Should you find yourself on the beach for a full day, or even just a span of a few hours, there’s no lovelier way to mark the passage of time than to make a sun clock!
To start, Travis needed to find a stick that we could poke in the center of our dial. But the beach was short on sticks! A sturdy piece of sea grass did the trick instead.
We took note of the first shadow (around 1 pm) and marked the line with stones and shells. It was neat to see how quickly the shadow “ticked” along, already a new line we could mark at the next quarter hour.
It turned into a fun game, too, to protect the sun clock (soon dubbed the ‘Castle of the Sun’) from waves, using moats and mounds of sand.
You can continue the fun with additional rocks and shells for as long as you stay at the beach, marking each new hour or half hour shadow as it appears. And at the end of the day, take the collection of rocks and shells home!
