Best Beach Games For Families

We love a family beach day. We love visiting the beach at different times of the year and exploring the coast in all sorts of weather. We find slightly cooler days work for us better, as we can be a bit more active with the kids and don’t need to worry about them getting too hot and applying suncream all then time. It makes for a more fun explore and gives us opportunities to make up games, rather than just finding a spot to keep cool. Gone are the days where the beach was about reading a book and topping up my tan. Don’t get me wrong, we still like to sit and appreciate the view and relax a little, and the only way that happens is if we have inspired the kids to play through some ideas that we present them. So here is our top ten list of Best Beach Games for Families.

Beach in a Jar

This is quite possibly one of their favourite recent beach activities.  I save up old spice jars or the jars that cake sprinkles come in.  You then give them the jar and let them fill / layer up their own beach jar with sand, coloured pebbles, shells etc.  

Sand Writing 

Writing names, letters, numbers, drawing pictures etc – let them loose with a stick to do some mark making in the sand. 

Yoga 

Keep it simple by getting them to do a downward dog, warrior pose or salute to the sun; or for the more adventurous they can all have a go at creating a gymnastic routine on the sand.

Old Fashioned games 

A good old fashioned game such as Noughts & Crosses or marking out hopscotch is perfect for playing on the sand.

Mini Paddling Pools

Mine always get a little frustrated building sandcastles as there is always a helpful sibling to knock them down.  Give my kids a spade and they love to dig; with trips to the water to fill it up, they love to have a warm pool to sit and splash in.  They tend to get competitive and try and make the biggest ones.

Scavenger Hunts

 

For a cooler day we love to go and explore and find various items from a downloaded Pinterest page.  I have included my Scavenger Hunt board where there is some beach ones included. Use your buckets to collect your items.  

Litter pick

Nothing could be more important on our coast lines right now then to remove the plastic and litter from the beaches.  We were very pleased to see at our nearest beach a litter initiative with grabbers available to pick up litter.  This really appealed to the kids to use the grabber and it was quite honestly pretty hard to find much litter as it seems visitors to the beach are really keen to take part.  Maybe pick up your own grabbers for litter picking and take them along to the beach. 

Fossil Hunts 

Mine love to look through rock pools and cliff sides to find fossils.  We have been lucky enough to be close to the jurassic coast lines and find a few amazing fossils on our beach visits.

Sand Burying 

My children love to be buried, we find it better for an adult to bury each child, otherwise siblings tend to be a bit sand throwing happy!

Ball Games

 

An obvious one but don’t forget to pack a game or a frisbee. This seems to be the most popular game for our teenager.  I find in a busy day to day life it’s really easy to run out of time to play a simple game of catch or football with our kids.  By taking a ball with us, we remember to teach them catch or play piggie in the middle or a group game of catch.  This year we have picked up a cheap rounders set to try out.  

I hope that this list gives you some inspiration for the best beach games for families. If you have any fun ideas for the beach please do share them with us.

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