A beach vacation offers a host of opportunities for your children to have fun, but it’s not always as simple as plunking them down on the sand and telling them to go at it. Make sure you have a list of activities to suggest to them if things slow down and they run out of ideas. Remember some of the following to make sure you always have great games ready for your kids at the beach:
– Create a treasure chest. Treasure chests and beaches often go together in the imagination, and your kids can have a ball collecting items to fill a chest with treasures from the beach. Feathers, shells, stones, and sea glass make excellent treasures. If your kids enjoy crafts, you can even bring along boxes and supplies so that they can decorate their treasure chests right there on the beach.
– Sand games. The sand offers a number of opportunities for your kids to have a good time. Try having them dig a hole and fill it with water, then dig a channel from their hole to the ocean so they can watch it flow out. Or have them build a dam and see how the water moves around it. You can also encourage them to make a sand castle or even a whole sand city.
– Sand pictures. The beach can be a medium for great art, or at least entertaining art. Your kids can draw in it with their hands and feet or with sticks, or they can incorporate other items like rocks, shells, and driftwood into their designs. They can create small pictures or large ones, depending on how much room they have. The only limit is their imagination.
– Fun with footprints. Kids who have never been to the beach before may love the simple act of making trails in the sand. However, you can also spice it up. They can use multiple footprints to create a dinosaur trail, or a bigfoot trail, and let their creativity run wild.
