Bathing suits, sun, sunscreen, beach balls, sand…all of these things put together make an outing to the beach a great experience for kids. However, not everyone lives close enough to the beach to visit very often. If that happens to be the case with your family, why not make your child’s next party have a beach theme? If you cannot go to the beach, bring the beach to you!

In the preparations for your party, buying a kiddie pool big enough to accommodate most of your guests will be necessary. What is a beach party without a little swimming? If you cannot find one large enough, buy several and place them all over your yard. (On your invitations, be sure to indicate the guests will be permitted to swim. This way everyone is prepared and wearing a swim suit. If you don’t want to supply all the sunscreen necessary, remind parents to put that on their children before they arrive. Also, full supervision is required at all times - never leave children unattended around water or any depth.)

Another popular event when you go to the beach is building sand castles. If you have a sandbox, that will work just fine. There are spectacular molds for making elaborate sand castles. Give each child an opportunity to play…and then put them in a pool to clean them up!

Playing in the water can make children quite tired, so have some fun games for them to play which are restful for after the swimming portion of your party. Some ideas of quiet, restful play are:
Hot Beach Ball – Seat all the guests in a large circle. With a blown up beach ball, play the traditional game of “Hot Potato”.
Throw the shell in the beach bucket – All you need a several beach buckets and a variety of shells. If the guest gets a shell into a bucket, they can win a prize! (Beach balls are inexpensive and make great prizes!)
Pin the beak on the sea gull – Played just like pin the tail on the donkey. Sea gull pictures can be found in the encyclopedia or many children’s picture books. Variations of this could be pin the claw on the crab or pin the coconut on the palm tree.
Find the sand dollar (or beach rock or sea shell) – in a large bucket of sand, have a lot of common items you can find on the beach. Let the guests dig for them and what they find, they keep.

Food at a beach party can be anything at all. Just serve it as if you were on a picnic! Grab those beach blankets and let them eat on the ground! Goldfish crackers and pretzels would be thematic, as would shark-shaped gummy snacks and gummy worms.

The beach party theme is easy to find in many party outlet stores. You will be able to find plates, cups, napkins, decorations, invitations and thank you notes, all with a sunny skies, sand castles or ocean creatures. If you do happen to have trouble locating paper products, go to your computer and look at the many quality party stores that are located online. (Tip: when ordering online, leave plenty of time for shipping!)

To close out your party, the guests can relax in front of any number of cartoons or books which have a beach theme.