Around the middle of June last year, our family decided to go to the beach. It was just our immediate family, and we had all been sequestered for a long, long couple of months. (Think back to the 2020 meme about February having 29 days, March having 300 days and April lasting 5 years.) It proved to be a much-needed week of therapy. We had a private house on the beach, and stayed at our getaway in paradise for the week playing in the sand, lounging by the pool, and most of all, enjoying each other’s company. So, at some point, we packed and headed out to the Isle of Palms, South Carolina for some fun in the sun. I thought it would be fun to do a beach unit the week leading up to our vacation and then surprise the boys with the trip on the last day. Essentially, we would study all things beach, then ask them, “How would you like to go to the beach?” When they said, “yes,” we thought it would be fun to say, “Ok, how about tomorrow?” As I prepared a week of fun beach themed activities, I used the word beach for an outline. The plan was as follows:
B each Bums
S E a Creatures
Sh A rks
Bu C caneers
H ow would you like to go to the beach?
As an ongoing activity, we made our own beach and added to it each day. I took a half sheet pan for each of the boys to serve as their beach. Read on to find out all the fun activities we did for each of our themed days in addition to creating our very own sensory bin beaches. There are even 10 shark riddles for you to challenge your children’s shark knowledge. I will wrap up this post with some travel tips from our trip this past week. So just know, we end up at the beach with our toes in the sand listening to the sound of waves, but much like the plot of some movies and T.V. episodes, I’m starting this post off like so…
Beach Bums
For the first day of our beach unit, we dove right in to learning all about sand. How does sand form? Do you know? Sand forms by rocks that are broken down over years by weather and waves. We watched the short video below that helped introduce the concept.
Where does sand come from video
For our activity, we grabbed our half pans and put some sand (acquired at Home Depot) to make our beach. We added sand to cover half the pan until it was about halfway up the side. Now that we had sand, we needed a towel, umbrella, and a beach bum. We designed our beach towels using some felt from the craft closet. You can cut some rectangle shapes and let your little ones decorate the beach towel however they want. For the umbrellas, you just need some colored paper and toothpicks. It doesn’t have to be complicated. We cut some circles and poked our toothpick through the top and just like that, our beach bum had some shade. At this point, tell your kids to go grab their favorite action figure, Lego person or any other toy person they choose to place on the beach towel.
The other item we added was our very own crab. I included a link below to an easy crab that anyone can make. Grab an egg carton and cut it. Use the pouch the egg sits in as the body of your crab. Flip it over and use some paint to give your crab some color. Add some pipe cleaners for legs and some googly eyes and your crab is complete! I used sparkly pipe cleaners to make our crab legs because the movie for the day was Moana, and I love the song, “Shiny,” sung by the crab. Jemaine Clement, a New Zealand actor, musician and comedian sings the song. You parents should check out some songs by Flight of the Conchords, a Grammy Award-winning comedy duo. He and Bret McKenzie have some witty, lighthearted tunes that will make you laugh. One of my favorites is, “The Most Beautiful Girl.” Returning to our beach activities, we played a game called beach ball toss for some recess. Decide on a category for every color on your beach ball. As you toss it around, everyone must name something from the category of the color their right hand is touching when they catch it. Make the categories anything you want, and no repeating what others have said! We rounded out our afternoon with some dedicated reading time and a showing of Moana.
Sea Creatures
On our second day we learned about some sea creatures and added a couple more items to our beach. We watched the video below that covered some impressive animals found in the Pacific Ocean such as whales, sea lions, orcas, anemones, clams, coral and more. My oldest also wanted to learn about lobsters so we added a short video about those interesting creatures. Of course, the things my two picked up on was that lobsters release urine from a nozzle under their eyes, meaning they pee out of their faces. Boys.
The next thing we added to our beach was the water. Actual water would be far too messy and kind of ruin everything, so we used crepe paper streamers instead. Grab the shade of blue that achieves the water look you want and weave it around to make the appearance of waves. We read the Rainbow Fish during reading time. This book is a classic. You can never read to children enough about sharing. What gets me is the scenario where one child is not even playing with something, but let the other one show interest and suddenly, I hear “hey, that’s mine!” I follow up with “yes, but you are doing something else so why can’t your brother play with it?” Along with the “terrible twos,” you have the “territorial ones, twos, threes, fours, fives,” all the way up to, well, when does it stop? It probably just changes to, “Hey that’s my shirt,” or “No, you can’t use my glove or borrow my car.” Keep the Rainbow Fish handy. Reference it often. Next, we made our own rainbow fish with playdough and some craft jewels. Form your own colorful fish or use a fish shape to cut one out of playdough. Then add some jewels to your fish to make it sparkly. There is a link below to the sticker sheets we used. They have different sizes, and you can just peel and stick. At some point, ask to borrow a jewel from your child’s fish for your own and see what happens. This might result in a re-reading of the book.
For an activity, I had them come up with as many beach words as they could and then make up a story using some of the words. It gave them a chance to be creative, but also my oldest was learning about composition in school. This helped reinforce concepts like the beginning, middle and end of a story. The funniest things come out of kids’ mouths so why wouldn’t I want to hear an entire story? They launched into some good examples of the food chain at work in their tale. There was also a family of sharks that got into a rumble on the beach, west side story style. We went for a swim and played some pool tag to wrap up our afternoon.
Sharks
Day three was probably my favorite. It was all about sharks. We went through a time when it was always shark week at our house. It was time to bring it back. We love learning about sharks and since my boys seem to know a little about them already, I decided to find a fun way to test their knowledge. Before we dove into that, we watched the video below to get reacquainted with the some of the species found in the ocean.
Our next activity was made possible by Amazon, as a lot of them are, but not in the way you might think. At some point, I ordered something large enough to end up with a box I could break down and use in my feed -the- shark bean bag toss game. I got the idea from an article on Pinterest focused on ocean themed activities. I have included the link below. I just did the best I could to make the shark image myself and we tossed bean bags at the shark trying to get them in his mouth. It was during lockdown, so that is what we had to work with, and I have to say it was great fun. My favorite part was when my little one went behind the shark and started tossing them back as if the shark was spitting them back out. Adorable, but no fair.
Finally, it was time to test their knowledge. I created ten shark riddles for them to see how clever they were. I have to say, I was impressed. Working together, they got nine out of ten correct. The zebra shark riddle had them a bit stumped. I’ve included an image of page 1 below and the link to the entire PDF as well. We also read a new book I ordered from Amazon called, The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark. It is a cute, underwater tale following a similar storyline to The Three Little Pigs. Last, but not least, we added a shark toy to the water in our beaches. My boys just happen to have quite a few shark toys already based on various phases they have gone through, or trips to various museums with grandparents. Everyone knows grandparents can’t say no to those cute little faces pulling them toward the gift shop. You know who you are. No judgement here. I love a good gift shop. I readily admit, I’m part of the problem. When we visited my nephew’s college, I am the one who came back with more stuff than anyone else. If your child does not have a collection of shark toys, the link below provides some options.
Ocean themed activities and games
The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark
Buccaneers
By Thursday, it was time to take to the sea. We learned all about the oceans of the world by starting with the video below from Homeschool Pop. It was a great excuse to get our world map back out and locate each one to reinforce what the video covered. The sea can be a dangerous place even if you’re not swimming with sharks thanks to scallywags like Jack Sparrow. We learned a little about the history of pirates from the video at the link below, which is in the “A Kid Explains History,” series, and decided to give pirating a try. To get into character, we learned some of the famous pirate lingo listed below. After dressing the part and grabbing hats and swords, we were ready to find some buried some treasure using our very authentic treasure map. We battened down the hatches, flew the Jolly Roger and set off. I drew some symbols like the ones on our map and strategically placed them around the yard so they would have a point of reference for finding where the treasure was hidden. There was a bit of hornswoggling, but I reminded them that I was not opposed to adding ‘walk the plank’ to my arsenal of discipline strategies, and that seemed to help. All in all, it was a very lucrative day for my little buccaneers. We rounded out the day by settling in to read Pig Kahuna Pirates! and watched a little Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Pirate lingo:
- Ahoy, Matey! -hello friends
- Batten down the hatches! -tie everything down, there’s a storm coming
- Blimey! -statement of surprise
- Blow the man down-command to kill someone
- Buccaneer-another word for pirate
- Dead men tell no tales-leave no survivors
- Heave ho! -put some muscle in it!
- Hornswoggle-to cheat someone
- Jolly Roger-Pirate flag
- Scallywag-insult
- Scuttle-to sink a ship
- Shiver me timbers! -disbelief
- Thar, she blows! -whale sighting
- Walk the plank-punishment. Someone’s going overboard
- Yo ho ho! -pirate cheer!
How Would You Like to Go to the Beach?
On our final day of beach themed fun, we learned about sea turtles and octopuses. There are links to two short videos below that I watched with the boys and then we rounded out our beach terrarium with these amazing animals. I certainly learned a lot from the octopus video. Considering their mischievous nature, escape artist tendencies and their destructive capabilities, I think the octopus might be my child’s spirit animal. We made our own sea turtle and octopus following the instructions below. I could not find a smooth rock so I used a piece of brick for my turtles. I think the rocks would be so much cuter if you can find one that will work.
Sea turtle: You Will need a smooth rock, some light blue or green paint and a thin sharpie marker. Simply paint the rock and then draw the outline of the sea turtle on it once it dries.
Octopus: You will need some large pom poms, any color you like. Cut a round circle out of colored paper or card stock to glue the pom to. The circle should be a little smaller than the your pom. Prior to gluing, take some pipe cleaners and cut them so they are about 4 inches or so long. Take 8 of those and staple them to the paper circle fanned out to be the legs. Glue your pom in the middle and then add some googly eyes. As an educational bonus, take some beads and let your little ones count while stringing them on the octopuses’ legs.
The different textures of these last two animals make great additions to your beach!
For recess, we did some swimming, another round of our beach ball game and we read Duck and Goose Go to the Beach! Since it was our last day, it was time for the final question, so we asked,
“How would you guys like to go to the beach?” They said they would love to, of course, but had no idea the opportunity for us to go was right around the corner, as in the next day. We usually talk about planning vacations much further in advance and have never surprised them like that before. So, we said, “Ok, how about tomorrow?” Once they realized we were serious, there was no way to contain the excitement. If you have never surprised your kids in this way, I suggest you do. Their little faces; priceless. It also cuts down on the number of times you get asked, “how many days until we leave for vacation? At that point, we all became occupied with packing for our trip.
Now we can fast forward, but not just a week. Let’s jump in the DeLorean and head to July 2021. We just took our first trip by plane since the pre-pandemic era. It was so good to get away with family and just hang out at the beach in our own space. I thought I would add some information to this post that you might find helpful for traveling with kids along with some beach tips.
- Plan for your route: This is not the same as planning your route. Planning your route is plugging in addresses into the GPS, planning stops, picking airports to fly into, renting a car, and so on. Planning for your route means making sure your little ones have everything they need to make their (and your) trip as smooth as possible. Someone once told me to go to the Dollar Store and grab several items for my kids for a long car ride. The concept will work for car rides and air travel, and it served me well when they were young. The idea is that you can introduce something new at various intervals along your trip to keep them occupied. TSA will let you bring your own snacks and having some entertainment options will prevent you from having to purchase something expensive in the airport if you get delayed for any reason.
- Time out for essentials: Make sure you bring the important stuff. If you are a parent of little ones, you know what the important stuff is. If your little one has a favorite blanket or stuffed animal, don’t leave home without it. Again, you may think you never would, but in the hustle of getting out the door, and all the excitement of vacation, it can happen. Trust me. Backing up to packing with your kids. I know you moms are probably the main packers, but it is also a good idea to ask your kids if there are special things they want to bring. You don’t want to get to your destination and hear, “Mom, you didn’t pack my Star Wars shirt!” It’s not like that narrows it down for me since my child has lots of Star Wars shirts, but you get my point. I had a discussion about favorite shirts and any pajama requests during packing and things went very smoothly. So, just take a moment as you get ready to leave, and run down the list of essentials, and no, parents, this does not include any of your items. There is likely a Target or Walmart near wherever you are staying, so if you forget something, no big deal. If; however, you forget beloved Snuggle Bear, then your route becomes a trail of tears.
- Screen the kids bags before TSA does: I choose to skip right over the items the adults forgot to remove from their bags, and talk about the kids bags. Now, I know this seems like an obvious thing that, as parents we would remember. That is true, and I am a seasoned traveler especially as it relates to air travel. However, traveling by myself for work, I do not normally check a bag. Traveling with a week’s worth of items for four people; however, is a different task. Given that we checked our larger bags, the boys just had their backpacks, presumably filled with toys, stuffed animals, iPads, etc. As they pulled my younger son’s backpack off the belt for further inspection, I looked at my husband and asked, “Did you check his backpack?” He said no, and I know I didn’t check it so we stared in anticipation, wondering what object the TSA agent was about to pull out and how we would explain it. This is the little boy who would gladly juggle knives if we would let him. Queue suspenseful music and….turns out it was sunscreen. Bless his heart, he knew he was going to the beach and appropriately packed what he knew was important. Mom win. I couldn’t even be upset about that. Quite responsible. We high-fived on our way to the gate.
- Do not trust the 32,000 foot connection: This one is specifically for the air travelers. If your kids have devices or they will be using yours, you may want to download a movie prior to boarding the plane. Why? That in-flight Wi-Fi connection is not a guarantee. Yes, if you connect, you can watch the free movies they provide, but sometimes they have issues, so I recommend having a back up.
- Beach logistics: If you are going to beach, sunscreen is a given (I hope), but I would like to make a plug for the swim shirts as well. There are UVA and UVB rays, and while sunscreen helps block UVA, the swim shirts help block the majority of UVB rays. Those, I’m told by my dermatologist, play the greatest role in causing skin cancers. Also, if you’re headed to the beach with little ones, you either already know, or soon will that it could be awesome or a complete disaster. They could giggle, play, crawl around and love everything about the beach and the water. Or, they could try to eat the sand, cry, whine about hating the sand, not like the water and ask to go back up to the house/condo 15 minutes after arriving. This is not ideal, especially because it took you longer to get ready, get their suits on, apply sunscreen and carry the chairs and the umbrella down. This is where you can be ready with some alternative ideas. You break out the beach toys you were smart enough to bring and say you can’t go back until someone builds a sandcastle. When that is over, give them a beach scavenger hunt. It doesn’t have to be official, just come up with some things you find on a beach and send them off. You can also get them to go collect some sea shells. Make it a contest. Who can find the most unusual, the one with the most colors, etc. You get the point. All of this should at least buy you an hour of relaxing in the sun, listening to the waves.
- Try something new: This year we tried doing some inland fishing. I had no idea if the boys would enjoy it or not, but we took a chance on a completely new experience for them, and I am glad we did it. It was a lot of fun and they were so excited when they caught a fish. They each got to experience that tug on their line and the subsequent fight all the way into the boat. The captain wasn’t even upset when my little one kept scooping out his bait fish and throwing them back in the ocean.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about our beach themed unit. My goal is that it gives you a few ideas for some fun activities you can do if you ever decide to do a beach or ocean theme with your kids. Last year was a challenge in so many ways, and that is putting it mildly. However, I am grateful I had the opportunity and resources to create some memories with my boys while we were in lockdown. I hope I never forget the shark game we made from the Amazon box, or the sparkly rainbow fish made out of playdough. I hope you get the chance to get away, and head somewhere to relax, even if just for a few days. Maybe some of these travel tips will come in handy. Have no fear though. If you mess up and forget an “essential,” it will be just like the questions you miss on a test. It will make such an impact that you’ll never forget it again. As I wrap up this post, I wanted to point out the title, “Float On,” is a song by Modest Mouse. It’s a nice reminder to not let the bad days get you down because the good ones are coming. My favorite part is,
“Alright, already, and we’ll all float on,
Alright, already, we’ll all float on,
Alright, don’t worry, even if things end up a bit
Too heavy, we’ll all float on, alright.”
I can’t believe it is already almost September of 2021. I hope all of you moms had a wonderful summer break. I know every day brings a unique set of challenges for each of us, but hang in there.
The tide is high, but I’m holding on.
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