Sometimes you don’t want to be carrying loads to the beach, sometimes it’s nice just to turn up with water, snacks, suncream a towel. (See An Essential Packing List for a Day at the Beach)
But what about the beach games the kids cry – actually they don’t most of the time they don’t need games. Running, exploring, and playing in the sand is often enough. But if you need to entertain them (or yourself) for a few hours and you find yourself empty handed…
Build Sandcastles: Let everyone get creative with their own sandcastle designs; work together on one masterpiece have a mini competition to see who can make the most impressive castle. Most of the time we have a bucket and spade at the beach, but if you don’t then a large flat pebble or a bit of driftwood can substitute a spade and hands can shape the castles, and decorate with shells, pebbles and seaweed!
Beach Treasure Hunt: Create a list of things to find on the beach such as shells, driftwood, a specific type of plant, feather, seaweed, or colour of pebble. Split into teams and see who can find everything on the list first.
Beach Yoga: Take advantage of the beautiful scenery and do some yoga on the beach (maybe not so easy on a busy beach in peak summer holiday – but it might be exactly when you need it).
Beach Art: Collect shells, pebbles, seaweed, or other bits and bobs you can find on the beach and get creative to make a work of art. A face with scraggly seaweed hair is always a favourite but see how creative you can be.
Beach Hopscotch: Get stick, draw the numbered squares, get some pebbles and let’s hopscotch! Draw two sets of squares and get a race going!
Beach Towel Tug’o’War: Twist a big beach towel until it’s almost rope like and then split the teams evenly. 1, 2, 3… heave!
Beach Tag, “You’re It!”: We all know the rules to this classic game, but on the beach as the sand makes the chase more fun. Added beach fun, the person who is “It” can pretend to be a shark or an octopus.
Beach Boules: Boules, pétanque or bocce but with pebbles. What’s good about this version is that rather than one size ball that might be a bit big or heavy for small hands you can gather pebbles to suit.
Sand Targets: Draw concentric circles around a bullseye and draw the scores e.g., 20 for the bullseye, 10 for the next closest, 5, then 1 for the outermost circle. A short distance away draw a throwing square and see who can score the highest by throwing some pebbles into the target. Draw throwing squares further away to make it add variety and difficulty but give each of these a bonus +5 or +10 to reward the extra challenge.
Got any extra ideas? Please add them in the comments.
Enjoy your day at the beach, your number one priority is probably to have fun, don’t forget to bring plenty of water and sunscreen to keep yourself hydrated and protected from the sun.
Even in the UK on a cloudy day the sun can cause damage. Use a sunblock or sunscreen of at least factor 30 sunscreen preferably SPF50+, cover up with suitable clothing, a hat, and sunglasses.
Sunglasses – make sure it offers full UVA and UVB protection. Sunglasses with ‘UV400’ protection will filter out 99% of UV light. It’s important to remember that the darkness of your sunglasses lenses has nothing to do with UV protection.
Spend time in the shade when the sun is strongest. In the UK, this is between 11am and 3pm from March to October. Find a shady spot if you can or a beach tent with UPF50+ UV Protection.
Links:
Sun protection and Sun Safety
Suncream and Sunscreen
Sun protective clothing
Beach and Sun Shelters
Sunglasses
