4 ways to play with pebbles at the beach

We’ve been fortunate to spend a few days at the beach over the summer holidays. The children just love the beach, much more than I do! They are happy to play and don’t really need anything special such as swimming clothes or toys. They seem happy with the sand, sea and stones – as long as I have a towel to dry off wet hands and feet.

Over the weekend we visited the beautiful beach at Dawlish in Devon. We’ve holidayed there a lot and love to scour Dawlish Town beach for sea glass, shells and smooth pebbles. It’s become a bit of a tradition to stop off for fish and chips, eat them whilst watching the sea, then go and play with pebbles at the beach.

4 ways to play with pebbles at the beach

We were there on Saturday and we just didn’t want our visit to end. After we had eaten our fish and chips we went and sat on the beach. It’s very pebbly, the stream which runs through the town runs into the sea via a small walled area which gets flooded by the tide. It’s such a great beach for kids!

First we looked for different shaped pebbles. We found hearts and islands, animals and faces. I was especially proud of my heart shaped pebble.

We made people out of pebbles, looking for bodies, heads and arms and legs in all the different stones. My 6 year old thought this was funny and kept finding larger and larger stones for my body!

I challenged the kids to see who could find the smoothest pebbles and stack them the highest. This was actually quite hard for them but they spent ages looking for smooth stones and trying to balance them on top of each other.

The sun was setting but we just about had time to teach them how to skim stones. This was something I remember doing with my Dad, growing up on an island was perfect for this! My 8 year old soon got the hang of it and we can’t wait to get back to the beach again soon.

Have you done any of these things? What games do you play at the beach?