Kidding Around: Winter Beach Party

For this month's meeting of my K-2nd grade program, Kidding Around, I decided to hold a beach party. I figured it would provide a fun contrast to our winter weather. Little did I realize the extent of this contrast: Our beach party was held during a week where the temperature (not including wind chill) stood firm in the single digits. I'd say a little beach related fun was sorely needed.

To start our party I talked with the kids about what they like about the beach. We are a small town right on the water, so it wasn't surprising that the kids were all big fans.

Next we played a pretty laid back game of volleyball with a beach ball originally purchased for use with my parachute during storytime. With this age group I didn't bother with having them keep score. I just wanted them to have fun and get some energy out.

We continued the fun with game often played at beaches and pools: Marco Polo. To allow all kids to have turns I often had multiple kids being Marco at the same time. This pretty much wound up being hiliarious.

Our next activity was "Pin the Sunglasses on the Sun". I used images from OpenClipart and cut and laminated the pieces. I have adapted "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" for many purposes, and I have to say it is always a hit with this age group.

We finished up by watercolor painting seashells and having a snack of cookies, tropical fruit snacks, goldfish and Hawaiian Punch.

It was definitely a lot of fun, and did put us in a warm frame of mind for awhile. If only Elsa could do something fix our current state of deep freeze permanently.

Thanks for reading! Sending warm thoughts to you all :)