How to Plan a Beach Day with Kids
The other day I got caught up in the comments section of an article about taking kids to the beach. I was so surprised to see that so many parents were commenting that they would never take their kids to the beach because it would be too much work or because it wouldn’t feel like a vacation. A day at the beach with kids sounds like a lot of work but in all honesty, it doesn’t have to be! You can, in fact, have your beach day and enjoy it, too!
Over the past 17 years, I have enjoyed thousands of beach days with our 4 kids whose ages span from 17 down to age 2. Yep, you read that age gap correctly! One thing I have learned is that you can never be over-prepared! Living on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we live full time where millions of people vacation and we take full advantage of our beaches every single day.
Packing for the Beach
First things first, you’ve got to get yourself onto the beach. Of course, if you’re taking children with you that means that you’re also taking “stuff.” Gone are the days when you could just walk onto the beach with a towel and a good book. Now you’re going to need multiple towels, snacks, snacks, and more snacks! You need sunscreen, something to provide shade, and… yep, you guessed it, toys! Just getting all of this to the beach can be a challenge. We’re obsessed with our Joovy Platoon to help us get all of our gear to the beach in one trip. We can easily add on beach chairs, a cooler, our beach toys, and our tent which means that we can make it to the beach in one trip!
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Plan of Attack!
When you have kids, you have to do your best to be prepared. Here is an easy breakdown that might help you get everything organized so you can have a fun day at the beach!
What to Bring
Some of our favorite beach toys are eco-friendly beach buckets and shovels, KanJam, and our beloved boogie and surfboards. Our kids called their boogie boards, “board boards” before they could even walk, they would ride! We’ve logged endless hours in the ocean with our kids and being able to give them confidence in the water has been such a valuable gift.
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The best tip I can give about spending a day on the beach with kids is that you’re going to need 3 times the amount of food that you think you will need. Playing in the sand, heat, ocean, and the sun takes a lot of energy so healthy snacks fill our cooler to the brim!
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Before You Leave
We always start with applying sunscreen before we leave for the beach so when we arrive, we’re already protected! This gives my husband and me time to set up while the kids start on their sandcastles!
Set up your Spot
When we get to the beach, the first thing we do is set up our “spot.” Once we have our tent, chairs, and beach blanket spread out, we are ready for some fun! We make sure that our cooler is accessible to our kids and that they always know where their water bottle is. Each child has a ziplock bag inside the cooler with their snacks for the day. This eliminates the need to ask mom and dad for a snack.
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I also make sure to set a timer for reapplying sunscreen. It is so easy to get caught up in the fun and forget to reapply so I set a timer on my phone for the full day. Nothing ruins a vacation like a bad sunburn!
Ocean Awareness
One thing that I really try to focus on a daily basis with our children is the beauty of nature. From tiny sand fleas, pelicans, dolphins, ghost crabs, and seashells, we are most often found connecting with the tiny creatures and creating sandcastles for them to “live” in.
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The number one thing that we teach our kids about the beach is how powerful the ocean is. That doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of the water, we just have to know about the water! Water safety is always so important when you are a parent with young children at the beach or even the pool, check out more info about getting your kids ready for the water. The second most important thing that we teach our kids about the beach is that we respect how beautiful our coastline is and we treat it with respect. That means that when we visit the beach, we must leave it better than when we arrived. Sometimes that means we safely pick up trash or move driftwood to the dune line to protect the dune but we always make sure that we give a little bit of our energy back to the beach!
At the end of a day on the beach, our kids have created beautiful memories and we are all tired! Is there really anything more than we can ask for as parents?
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