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Let’s say you’re going to the beach with your little one. You want to make the most of your time in the water, sun, and sand, but sand castles can only hold a child’s attention for so long. You need ideas for what to do beyond those twenty awesome minutes of sand castle fascination.

No worries! With the help of a few creative friends and bloggers, I’ve put together a ginormous list of fun, *free* (or nearly free) things to do at the beach with your toddler! (For your convenience, affiliate links are included when applicable.)

35 Free Things to Do at the Beach with Young Kids

The beach is the perfect place to let your child dump, scoop, and pour to his or her heart’s content. You can use buckets and shovels, cups and spoons, or your hands. Sensory play at its very best!

Go on a scavenger hunt and collect rocks, shells, seaweed, sea glass and sand. Put together a memory jar like these or amp up your water table at home like my friend at My Nearest and Dearest did here. Fantastic Fun and Learning has some great ideas for exploring, creating, and playing with shells in this series.

Before you head to the beach, check out this printable beach packing list. It has everything you need for the ultimate family beach vacation! 

Alternatively, pretend you’re a pirate and hunt for buried treasure. This could be shells, beach glass, sand dollars, or trinkets and treasures left behind by other beach bums. (Let me know if you find my husband’s original wedding ring! It’s somewhere in the sand in Venezuela…)

Get some exercise, Mom and Dad! Toss your kids in the air. Dance. Do water aerobics with your tots.

Engage in imaginative play. Try cooking, baking, and creating with sand. You’re familiar with mud pies. Try sand pies! (Sand looks a lot like brown sugar, after all!)

Build your child’s vocabulary. Beach vacations are great for exposing toddlers to new words! Identify sail boats, snorkelers and snorkel gear, shells, waves, fish, parasails, blimps, airplanes, crabs, seagulls, palm trees, and seaweed

Go on an active adventure. Take a walk, climb on rocks, splash in the waves, jump off sand dunes.

Build a moat.

Make sand angels.

For the trip to and from the beach, you may want to check out this post (click HERE) with 50+ screen-free travel toys activities for kids of all ages! 

Drink water, use sunscreen, wear a hat, and talk about sun safety. By the end of our recent trip, our two-year-old would eagerly remind us to reapply sunscreen and tell us, “No red spots. That the goal.”

Make a friend. You may find people from different countries and cultures sitting right next to you on the beach. In Jamaica, we heard kids speaking Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Kids need not speak the same language to understand play, fun, and laughter.

Play “Ring Around the Rosie” in the water. The big splash at the end when you all fall down will likely result in lots of giggles.

Take a footprint picture to remember your trip. Surely you can do better than ours! Or you can try making a plaster mold of your footprints.


Draw or write in the sand.

If you play in the waves, your child will inevitably end up with saltwater in his mouth.  Take advantage of this teachable moment. Ask your child what it tastes like. (Our daughter thought it tasted “spicy.”) Talk about how and why it tastes different from water from the faucet. Remind them that it’s not good for drinking.

If the water is smooth, demonstrate buoyancy. (Unless you’re like my husband who literally cannot float!)

Bring a truck or digger and turn your patch of sand into a construction site.

Help your future scientist or artist to see the beauty and wonder of nature. Watch the tide come in or out. Catch the sunrise or sunset. See the wind rattle the palm tree branches.

Fly a kite. Buy one from the dollar store or make your own. 

Track and name footprints–birds, crabs, people, dogs.

Chase birds. (I’m sure someone will think it’s cruel of me to suggest this. But my daughter LOVES chasing birds, and I like how it scares them away from our food.)

Go boating–peddle boat, sail boat, kayak, glass bottom boat. Wait! What? That’s not free! Au contraire! Many resorts and hotels offer free use of non-motorized water equipment.

Demonstrate how suction works by turning a cup filled with water and sand upside down.

Bury someone’s body or feet in the sand.

Play tag or chase.

Read an ocean-themed book. (This one gets good reviews.)

Take a nap. (Or at least close your eyes and rest!)

Make a railway line in the sand for your toy trains like my friend Jessica did in this post at Play Trains! (Be sure to read her note on why she suggests you use bath toys instead of regular train pieces.)

Look for rocks to paint. New to painting rocks? Check out these fun ideas from my friends at Thrive 360 Living (Sam is the rock painting expert!) and Two-daloo. (Click on their blog titles to see the tutorials.)

Pick up trash. Talk about how litter can hurt animals and the ocean. Rainy Day Mum has an excellent post on how to turn this into a game.

Throw a frisbee.

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Roll or toss a ball.

Engage in child-led play. When I sat down and followed my child, she made me a cake. The conversation went like this: “Happy birt-day, Mommy! I bake you a cake!” (I asked, “What’s in the cake?) Her reply: “Salt and spicy things.”

Stamp the sand using feet, cups, hands, buckets, sticks, and shells.

Have a crab walk race.

Color a beach picture–you can find some great (free!) printable pictures here.

And, of course, don’t forget to build a sand castle

(No vacation plans this year? Bring the beach to you! Check out these beach and ocean ideas from my friends at Buggy and Buddy and Fun at Home with Kids!)

This post is part of an ongoing series about traveling with little ones. Click on the pictures to see my three favorite posts, and check out our travel category for even more tips, stories, and ideas!

 You can find this post and others at these link parties!

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