Photo: Flickr Tabatha Fulker/ACF
Building sandcastles, surfing on waves, and licking the world's yummiest ice-cream!
A day at the beach can be truly magical.
Children can tank their bodies with warm sun rays and parents' endless love.
But it can also be a day filled with wonderous and mind-boggling ideas and questions.
Dream, build and invent.Invent playground shaped like a shell that makes its own light by using bioluminescence.
Feel inspired by the noisy but clever seagulls who often drop hard-shelled molluscs onto rocks break them open. Or invent a flying machine or toy inspired by their way gliding and soaring in the blue sky.
Photo: Jiyang Chen
Dream up the most amazing sandcastle inspired by seabirds that can survive the waves and survive until the next day. Look at the wading birds long and slender legs.
Is it possible raise up the sandcastle and build it on stilts?
Imagine what the castle would look it and ponder over if it is still a sandcastle? Perhaps part of the fun with building a sandcastle is that it is not there the next day so that you have to start all over again.
Photo: By Alpsdake (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],via Wikimedia Commons
And there is no rush to use the observations at once. It is after all summer.
Collect observations and ideas in a Biomimicry Notebook and open the book on a cold winter's day and get inspired by thoughts and ideas written down in the sand on a warm summer's day. The first idea is seldom "perfect and complete" and inventing licking ice-cream is tricky. . . but looking with a biomimicry lens is always possible and tremendously fun. Try it!