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So you’ve arrived at the beach without your bucket and spade and the kids announce they are bored and have nothing to do! What can you do? One of my friends is a master at this and over the years we’ve played countless free beach games over the years just involving things you can find easily on the beach.

Why not PIN or screenshot the image at the bottom so you can remind yourself of these when you find yourself on the beach. Oh and it doesn’t have to be warm to play these games, in fact a cold rainy beach with no-one else on is perfect for some of these free beach games too.

1.  Outdoor Cat and Mouse Game – Free Beach Games

Sounds complicated to explain but it’s really easy to play.

Draw a really large square/rectangle on the beach.

Draw paths or lines within the rectangle that people need to run along.

Draw a jail square somewhere on the ‘board’.

You need someone to be the cat and everyone else are the mice.

The cat can run in either direction but the mice can only run clockwise around the lines.

If the cat tags the mice they have to go to jail.

Another mice can get the jailed mice out if they can get to them and tag them.

The cat is trying to get all the mice in jail and then wins.

2. Outdoor Noughts and Crosses – Free Beach Games

One of the easiest free beach games and much easier to explain that Cat and Mouse

You simply draw a board on the sand with a stick and off you go!

3. Outdoor Snakes and Ladders – Free Beach Games

A perfect free beach game is Snakes and Ladders.

Draw a large square board and then number each of the squares or enough of them that you can work out the direction of the game.

Draw on the squares a few ladders and snakes as you would in the standard game.

Either make a sand dice board* or nominate an adult usually to shout out random numbers.

Have fun!

• You can see the sand dice board just about to the left of the photo below. 6 squares in a row and you literally just throw a stone and see where it lands.

4. Rock Tower Building Competitions – Free Beach Games

Decide whether you need to build the highest tower or the tower with most stones and set everyone off. Set a time 5/10 minutes and see whose is the best when you get to the end.

A fun free beach game!

5 Beach Olympics – Free Beach Games

If you’ve got a fishing net for javelin and how low can you go then all the better, but if not try discus with a large stone (if the beach is empty) the long jump, the high jump. All manner of different things you can try.

6. Boules – Free Beach Games

I was sceptical that we would be able to play this, but we all set about finding three stones of similar colour and size and then chose a jack. We set three different starting lines. Children, older children, adults and tried to get our stones as close to the jack as possible! It was brilliant – really good fun and very competitive. My winning stone was moved out of the winning position on the last throw!

7 Beach Treasure Hunt – Free Beach Games

Create a list of ten things that each person needs to find, set them some boundaries about how far they can go, and send them on their way. Call everyone back after a defined time and see what they have.

8 Pictionary – Free Beach Games

Split the family into teams and give the kids a picture to draw and see if you can guess what it is. We’ve had some funny horse drawings before!

9 Running Races – Free Beach Games

Simple standard game of tag! Or create a running track and do the 100m. Easy and fun.

10 Hopscotch – Free Beach Games

Draw out a game of hopscotch. Find a stone and off you go!

For more ideas about Games and Activities to do with the Kids at the Beach click on the photo below!

Why not PIN this Free Beach Games post for ideas in the future!