Summer is here and many families are spending time at the beach. I’m not a fan of the beach myself, but my boys are beach bums! Living in Florida means that it’s beach weather for most of the year, and I try to get my boys out as often as I can.  I had so much fun sharing things to do at the park with your kids that I thought I’d do a list for the beach.

5 Things to do with your Family at the Beach

1. Nature walk: Yep can do this at the beach as well. Walk along the shore and the sand and look for animals.  Consider doing a morning walk, an afternoon walk and an evening walk and notice the difference in what you find. Or a high tide walk and a low tide walk! We usually find hermit crabs, small fish and seagulls on our walks. And every now and then we are blessed with a dolphin or manatee sighting.  Just be sure to watch out for jellyfish, they sting!  (Take pics of what you find if you can’t collect it, then identify it in a nature book when you’re back home!)

2. Collect sea shells: There are many different kinds of shells at the beach. Take some time to collect some as you hang out on the shore. You can start a collection, or use the shells to decorate by filling glass containers, scattering them on window sills or decorating picture frames.  You can also make charts and graphs of the different animals, sizes, colors and shapes of shells you collected.

3. Build a sand castle: Every year around summer time I take my boys to the dollar store to stock up on buckets and shovels for the beach.  We are not very skilled at sand castle construction, but we have a lot of fun trying. I learned that the trick to getting your castle to stand is to use wet sand. My boys have fun collecting buckets of sand that we pile in rows and columns to build our kingdom. We also use some of our sea shell collection as decorations.

4. Pick up trash: Sadly, the beach can be covered with litter. I like to take a few minutes before we head home to pick up any garbage that we see on the sand and near the water. Especially be on the lookout for those plastic soda rings those are very deadly for the sea animals.

5. Have fun! Get out there and splash in the water with your children. The waves can be a ton of fun. My boys like to be thrown into the big waves when we are at the beach. I can’t pick them up anymore, but I can gently push them into the water.  Be willing to do something you might not enjoy for the sake of making a memory with your children. It’s worth it!

BONUS: Many of us like to gather books to read before we go to the beach, so you’ll be familiar with what you see while you’re there.  Here are some of our favorites:

• North American Wildlife: An Illustrated Guide (perfect for identifying just about everything you’ll find at the beach – or elsewhere)
• Let’s Read and Find Out Science Starfish
• Let’s Read and Find Out Science “What Lives in a Shell?”
• Seashells, Crabs and Sea Stars: A Take-Along Book
• The Seaside Switch (a book about the tides)

Those are just a few ideas of ways to have fun with your family at the beach. We usually spend an entire afternoon/late evening in the sun. I pack lunch/dinner, snacks and lots of water.

What are some of your favorite things to do at the beach?