8 Things to Pack in Your Beach Bag Beyond a Bucket and Shovel to Spark Creative Play
We’ve jumped waves and played tag. We’ve built a sand castle or at least a mound that looks like a castle. At least one of us has been buried in the sand or made to look like a mermaid. What now?
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If you’re going to the beach every day for a week, or you live close to a beach and can go all the time like we’re fortunate enough to do in San Diego right now, having some other out of the box items that rotate into your beach bag can help extend days at the beach with your kids.
8 Things to Pack in Your Beach Bag
Obviously we have buckets and shovels. I also have a fairly obnoxious collection of sand castle building molds. But those get old – what else can you do at the beach?
These are the other more unusual things I rotate in our beach bag:
- Plastic Animals (think building zoos, burying, pretending) We have these ones – the jumbo size makes them harder to lose.
- Barbies (build barbie a castle, bury her instead of mom, all manner of pretend) I’m not a huge Barbie fan, but they are water proof. I leave the clothes at home so I don’t have to worry about those getting lost but you could go theme and bring Lifeguard Barbie or Beach Ken.
- Construction Goggles (these put my kids in the building frame of mind. My kids picked these from our construction costume one day to go in the beach bag and they worked great. I imagine a plastic firefighter hat or other similar thing would spark creative play as well.)
- Plastic Trucks and Boats (dig ditches to make roads and rivers!) This set of vehicles has made many trips to the beach with us, but anything plastic would work.
- Kites and Streamers (so much fun on a windy day especially when the beach isn’t too crowded!) Kites, like these, are great but it does have to be fairly windy for kids to not get too frustrated. Streamers are fun even with moderate wind.
- Funnels and Tubing (you need a bucket or two to make this work but my kids find this kind of STEM experimenting endlessly interesting) You can get these at the hardware store or order them online. You don’t need anything fancy – the wider the better though and make sure the tubes and funnels fit together.
- Plastic Cooking Toys (more imaginative play. tea parties, picnics, making pretend food from shells and sticks…) I only bring the cooking dishes and maybe a couple of plates – not the food.
- Water Spray Bottles (fun extra dimension to building sand castles but also just fun to spray. My kids like water play of any kind) You can get different sizes – if your kids’ hands are big enough I like the slightly bigger ones.
The key, I think, is to only bring one or two of these things at a time. If you bring a massive bag with all of it every single time you go to the beach you will a) break your back and b) it’s kind of like a toy chest.
Too many toys at one time will always be overwhelming and result in crazy kids, a huge mess, and a frustrated mom.
I typically bring some of our sand castle toys (a few molds, two buckets, two shovels) and then one or two of the things listed above.
Read Also: 15 Learning Activities for the Beach
It’s amazing what kids can come up with if you give them a few different materials and a big open, natural space to play.
On this particular sunny afternoon (photo above) my twins found zoo animals at the bottom of our beach bag. Bucket caves, stick zoo enclosures, and shovel slides were created and a lion and giraffe became unlikely friends. I even had some blissful moments to enjoy the view and my book.
Read About My Non-Beach Adventure Supplies
