While you and yours soak up the vitamin sea and D in the beach season, here are some artsy craftsy activities designed for the little ones to enjoy. Don’t just lounge around on your chair. Get your hands in the sand, play and interact with the children.
Collect them all:
Collecting sea shells is a given. Why not broaden the horizons. Get some action and more sensory fun by collecting spongy algae, slimy weeds and dry sea grass.
These are readily available along Qatar’s beaches. You will find a lot of the green algae floating around on the shores. We picked the small round ones as they looked prettier and much less ickier than the large blobs. As for the dry grass there’s aplenty washed up on the shores.
Best beaches in Qatar? Check out family-friendly public beaches in Qatar.
Color your castles:
Building sand castles is what many of us do and its so much fun! Why not take it up a notch? Color your castle and enjoy breaking them into a colorful mess.
You will need some good quality food colors. We have used neon food colors which gave quite vibrant colors to the sand.
Take small amounts of sand in a small bucket or in separate plastic bags. Add few drops of one color and mix vigorously until its an even color. Dispense, wash your bucket and repeat with another color. Once you have all your colored blobs ready get shaping!
Think beyond castles:
Well, we could start small. Why not build a hut? or a race track for cars?
Above is an example of a cottage we made out of sand (the sand wasn’t exactly perfect for sculpting so please forgive the shapes) and added all the things we collected – sponges for shrubs, dry grass for a thatched roof and seashells and stones.
Balloon sand weights:
Take some colorful balloons and you can fill them up with water for some water balloon fun. or better yet, use a cut up bottle as a funnel to fill them with sand. Seal with a knot and enjoy your soft new balloon stress balls. Our kids loved to take them back home after a day at the beach.