Our favourite place to be...
Little Shrimps
Jane: Any one for shrimping? Okay, we might at the fag end of the season but it’s still worth a go. This summer, my neighbour Gill rediscovered her lovely wooden shrimping net from childhood: it’s 40 years old and as you can see, in pretty good nick. As a child, she used to go shrimping on Happisburgh beach in north Norfolk with this very same net, and this year took her children to Waxham Sands near Great Yarmouth to see what they could catch.
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Driftwood Mosaics
Jane: It’s the last day of half-term, and I’ve just been reading an article about how British children have the lowest level of wellbeing in 21 developed countries, according to UNICEF. Our children are apparently now almost captives in the home – the distance they can roam without an adult has dropped by 90 per cent in 20 years – and spend hours on their computer or watching TV in lieu of real adventure and challenge. It's true: when I was nine, I remember taking two buses to school across the city by myself, whereas I still walk my nine-year-old (who could easily handle it herself) the short journey to her classroom door every day. As parents get busier, the level of communication between adult and child becomes functional – ‘It’s time for tea’, ‘Is your bag packed for school?’, ‘Do this, do that’ – apparently making interaction a one-way ticket which increases children’s stress levels and makes them feel constantly bossed around. The answer, says the author, is to put children under less pressure to achieve and give them more room to explore, play and create…
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Shell Seekers
It's half-term and we're on a quiet Scottish island where the sand is white, the sea is deep turquoise, and the beaches are full of shells of incredible shapes and colours. We're staying in a house with shell art on the walls and a beach 20m away, so decided to see what we could find in a couple of hours' beachcombing. Everyone took a bag and picked up the shells they liked best, then brought them home and laid them out on the table to make instant homemade art. Carla arranged hers in the shape of a wheel, and also found a pipefish, which used to be rare but you see more often now...
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Beach Flower Pot Game
We’ve just been on the beach playing Beach Flower Pots, which was probably invented for ‘It’s a Knockout’. Form teams of two, choose the lightest and most poised member of your team to be the flower pot jockey and then race each other across the sand without touching it with your feet by stepping on buckets (or you can use heavy stones, but that’s much harder). You need three buckets per jockey – we just used cheap plastic ones we found in a shop on the way down to the beach.
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Scrub the Decks
This is easily the best warm-up game if you’re freezing after a dip in the sea.
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Pit Pat Race Track
Budding race car enthusiasts can have fantastic fun building a miniature Silverstone in sand.
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Sea Glass and Stone Collections
Collecting games keep children going for hours. A kids’ favourite is beachcombing for beautiful, bright, frosted slivers of sea glass, tumbled smooth by water and sand.
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Drip Castles and Sand Sculptures
You can make fantastically creative shapes and sculptures out of wet sand.
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Beach Boules
It's always worth packing your boules set when you go out for a day on the beach.
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Jurassic Mosaics
You can make the most dramatic mosaics with rocks, seaweed, stones, shells and other bits and bobs you find on the beach.
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Sand Traps
This provokes a primitive kind of St Trinians-esque joy in the perpetrator and is a great trick to play on your brother, sister, mother, father... You need sand that's not too dry and powdery so British beaches are ideal.
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French Cricket
This is an old family favourite and is incredibly fast fun. All you need is a cricket bat and tennis or beach ball.
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Beach Rounders
Always a goodie because it gets everyone involved and running round like mad hens. All you need is a rounders (or similar) bat and tennis ball. This version works when there aren't enough people to make two proper teams.
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Mud Glorious Mud
Slipping and sliding around in mud is good for you, they recently found, something to do with the endorphins (don't quote us on that). And it's especially good for children who derive enormous pleasure from getting superlatively mucky.
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