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Gardening with Kids: Start Now!

March 24, 2015 by Kelley 1 Comment

Let’s face it: We all like and value spending time with our children, but you can play only so many games of hide-and-seek before wanting to crawl under the bed and never get found. A few years ago, I discovered an activity with children that combines the best of all worlds: fun, education, kid-friendly messiness, and adult-friendly productivity. It’s gardening—and not the plant-some-pansies-in a-sunhat sort. Last year, the boys and I grew enough romaine, baby carrots, and cucumbers to keep these items off the grocery bill for the better part of spring and summer.

Science makes a case for gardening with kids, too. Studies have shown that gardening can boost kids’ self esteem, a sense of ownership and pride, relationships with family members, a taste for fruits and veggies, and even academic performance.

My first year of gardening, I made a lot of mistakes, and almost gave up. Like baking, gardening is a science, and small missteps, not to mention weird weather and days when life gets in the way of watering, can mean curtains for a crop. I overwatered and drowned seedlings; I forgot to regularly pick my basil and it bolted and got tough; I crowded my carrots and they grew skimpy and stringy; and nothing became of the raspberries at all. There’s still a patch in the upper left hand corner of our tiny garden where, mysteriously, nothing but weeds will grow. But I keep at it, because it’s something the kids and I genuinely enjoy doing together three seasons out of the year. Here, on the right, is what our little patch looked like at the end of last summer.

Chioggia, golden, and bulls blood beets, grown by Marion Mass and her kids to sell to Puck Restaurant in Doylestown, PA.

Last week, I had the pleasure of talking to Marion Mass, M.D., a pediatrician at Jellinek Pediatrics in Doylestown, PA and a contributor to Two Peds in a Pod. Dr. Mass is a green thumb and then some: she and her three children have been growing—and growing, and growing—a garden for more than five years now. At first, they planted just four or five veggies in a small patch; now, they have more than 1,500 square feet of plants, including heirloom potatoes, tomatoes, and beets, among other exotic vegetables, to sell to individuals and one local restaurant.

Marion Mass’s daughter and friends, planting potatoes

With Dr. Mass’s help, I’ve made a checklist of all things you should be doing now to get a successful garden going this spring. We know this checklist, below, might sound daunting, but trust me, it’s doable, and worth it. And above all, says Dr. Mass, don’t give up. “Too many people start a garden, fail with one vegetable, and decide they can’t do it,” she says. “But you have to think of each planting as an experiment.” And what better message to send to your child then to try something new, have something fail, learn from it, and try again?

Gardening with Kids: Late March-Early April Must-Dos

	Select a spot for your garden. For your first year, 16-24 square feet (4x4, 2x8, 3x7, etc.) is plenty big enough. It should be in a place that gets about six hours of sun per day, has good drainage, and is close enough to a water source that a long hose can reach it.
	Decide what you want to grow and eat, and when. The Farmer's Almanac has a great site that allows you to plug in your zip code and see what you can successfully grow at different times of the year. They even have kid-friendly vegetable graphics on the chart that will help kids follow along. Don't be overly ambitious: Start with 1-3 veggies and maybe some herbs in the early spring and again in late spring. For an easy-to-grow first year, Dr. Mass recommends planning for lettuce and radishes in the early spring and tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans in the late spring/early summer.
	Purchase seeds. Home Depot and Loews carry a big selection. You can also find relatively affordable organic seeds at Burpee, Peaceful Farm and Garden Supply, Seeds of Change, and even Amazon.
	If you want to get a jump start on growing and get kids excited, start seeds indoors. This is best for plants with a long growing season, like tomatoes. It requires a sunny windowsill, some small starter pots or trays, and a seedling starter mix. Follow seed packet instructions and have kids help you mist with a spray bottle to keep moist (but not soggy) once or twice a day. Don't sweat it if seedlings fail; you can start seeds directly in ground according to planting guide above, or later in the spring, purchase seedlings from your local gardening center.
	Buy supplies, if needed, to prepare your garden plot. I used empty space in a mulch bed on the side of the house, and edged the space with these surprisingly real-looking, easy-to-install polyethylene "rock" strips from Home Depot. If you don't have that, you can dig up grass in your chosen plot (good instructions here), or opt for an easy raised bed, which sits right on top of the grass. Home Depot carries easy-assembly raised bed kits like this 4x4 plot by Greene's Fence. No yard? Put a tiny elevated bed on a sunny deck or patio space and plan for 1-2 vegetables and 1-2 herbs.
	Buy tools. Keep it simple: a trowel for working the soil, a hand rake, and a spade (for everyone in the family) works. Try this ergonomic four-piece kit for you and older children and this kid-friendly set for little ones. Soft, not-too-thick gloves are a must. Add a long hose if yours won't reach your spot, and a Dramm Wand in your kids' fave color to attach to your hose for easy, gentle watering children can manage.

This week, we planted seeds for baby romaine lettuce, nasturtium flowers, and our kids’ very favorite thing to grow and pick, Danvers 126 6-inch “half carrots” (named after the Massachusetts town where the market gardeners who developed them lived), in pots on the windowsill. There’s still snow on the ground, but as soon as it melts, we’ll clean out the garden, work in some fresh compost, and plant lettuce. What are you planning on growing? Send me your pics and tips—I’ll be doing gardening posts every month or so from now through the start of the next school year.

Top photo credit: Shutterstock

Spring Craft: Nest Helpers

March 12, 2015 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Just when you think winter will never end, you wake up one morning to the tweeting of birds. The sound always makes me happy: I was raised in a family that was big on birds. We had multiple feeders outside our kitchen window, and my mom always made note, over her cup of coffee, about which birds were enjoying breakfast at the same time we were.

Now, I keep a Droll Yankee feeder—the easiest to refill and hang—in a sugar maple tree off the family room, and the boys and I always look for the neighborhood blue jay to make his rounds. Keeping a feeder filled has always seemed to me to be a great way to teach kids a number of lessons at once: selflessness, appreciation of the natural world, and the value of quiet observation, to name a few.

Yesterday morning, we visited the incredible deCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, where curators were celebrating Henry David Thoreau’s Walden through artwork and interactive exhibits. In the kids’ activity room, museum staffers introduced the boys and me to a project I had never heard about before but immediately fell in love with: nest helpers. Basically, you gather a variety of natural and synthetic filler materials—from yarn to netting to sticks and leaves—and bind it together with pipe cleaners or yarn to hang or suspend in a tree. Especially in the still-barren days of early spring, birds will pull from these little bundles to build their nests.

The results are a little messy looking, which is really the beauty of this craft. It’s great for little hands and short attention spans. Here are some good materials to start with. Anything soft and strong works; biodegradable is best.

-Pipe cleaners, wire, or a berry basket from the supermarket

-Different color yarn, snipped into 1- or 2-foot strands

-Twigs and leaves

-Raffia or ribbon

-Spare fabric or rags, cut into small pieces

Start with a little holder for your materials: Bend two or three pieces of pipe cleaner or multiple strands of wire around one another to make a spherical shape, twisting closed at the top until an open ball is formed. (A berry basket is ready to go.) Stuff the ball or basket with your soft materials and hang the nest helper from a tree where birds frequent. Watch throughout the spring to see if your materials disappear, and keep an eye out for nests that have been made with colorful pieces from your helper ball or basket.

What if Your Kid Hates Sports?

January 7, 2015 by Kelley 7 Comments

More kids than ever—a whopping 21.5 million, according a recent analysis by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association —play organized sports. Indeed, for better or occasionally worse, there seems to be a team for everyone, every season of the year. But what if you’re the parent of a child who doesn’t want to play on a team at all? For whom an hour at the dentist may be preferable to strapping on the shin pads and chasing after a soccer ball?

In our sports-crazed culture, parenting a child who claims to “hate sports” can be tricky. I’ve spoken with parents who worry that children who beg off little league tryouts or who shuffle around a basketball court in apparent misery are missing out on some important childhood rite—or at the very least, an opportunity to bond with peers in some meaningful way. These feelings are natural, particularly if you have a little youth league nostalgia yourself. Plus, there’s data suggesting that sports participation can help boost self-esteem, fitness, social confidence, and even academic achievement.

Other than putting a child’s lack of athletic interest in perspective—we are, after all, talking about games here—parents can do many things to support sports-averse kids at multiple ages and stages. In fact, many kids may get the physical, social, and emotional benefits of mainstream sports and more by participating in lower-stakes recreational games or less mainstream physical activities. With special thanks to HHK adviser Curt Hinson, Ph.D., a kinesiologist and dad who counsels schools around the country about improving gym and recess programs, we’re listed two big ideas here.

At the early childhood level…Don’t push programming.

It’s not hard to get sucked into the tot-team industrial complex cropping up in many communities (guilty here). It sometimes seems that everyone’s signing their preschoolers and kindergarteners up for soccer, tee ball, and the like. Sure, exposing a child to a variety of sports early on may be just thing to help him narrow down what he likes and doesn’t like. But if your little one starts balking every time you lace up those teeny-tiny cleats, it may be time to throw in the towel, at least temporarily. “The most common reasons a child ‘hates sports’ are that they had a bad experience or lack the skill to participate at a level that makes them feel successful,” says Dr. Hinson. Some tot-level organized sports—ones in which coaches attempt to teach skills that are above many participants’ fledgling physical capacities—can set the stage for both these problems. “If a child starts playing at an early age and he or she lacks the strength or coordination to participate at a successful level, they often become frustrated or bored, which, in a child’s mind, can equate to ‘hating sports,'” says Dr. Hinson.

If this is your kid, says Dr. Hinson, the best remedy is for parents not to force their children to play in an organized league, especially skill-based team sports like soccer, baseball, football, basketball or ice hockey. “It’s better in this scenario to spend the early years just playing with your child in the backyard or in an open gym space,” he says. “Often, throwing, catching and kicking skills can be developed quicker with you than at a team practice. Some team practices have kids standing around waiting in line more than they are engaged in skill development.” This way, you can gauge a young child’s interest without the pressures or costs of a team experience. Invite some friends or neighbors over every so often if the social aspect is of interest to you or your child. This may be extra work for you, but chances are the extra family time and lower pressure environment will benefit everyone.

At the elementary- and middle-school level…Sign up for alternative sports.

When your older child ‘hates sports,’ it may just be that he just hates the sports he’s been exposed to up until this point. While the saying that “there’s an athlete inside all of us,” may sound a little commercial or corny, it’s true that there’s some appealing physical activity out there for almost every child—and now more than ever. Some of those ballooning sports participation stats have to do with the fact that more and more kids are getting involved with physical activities that weren’t available to us as kids.

Talking to your friends, your child’s P.E. teachers, and, of course, local Google searches will help generate ideas. In our town outside of Boston, for instance, there are a few indoor rock climbing facilities that hold kids’ classes, and many kids’ skiing programs. Dr. Hinson has found that dance programs and gymnastics in particular appeal to many kids who are disinclined toward team sports. There’s also a growing number of fitness gyms that have launched kids’ programming, from yoga to Crossfit. More and more towns are holding running programs and races that begin at the school-age level, and there are even kids triathlons held in many communities (look for one near you at trifind.com).

Whether or not your child finds a friend who’s game to try out one of these alternative sports with her, consider joining her yourself. You may both get more fit—have you ever tried to keep up with a motivated 11-year-old?—and also find that the best bonding you do is on a running trail or chairlift. And that’s a win-win.

Photo credit: Biscarotte via Photo Pin, cc

Playing is Learning: Alphabet Tag

September 30, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Last night, as I rinsed the dinner dishes, I watched out of my window as my three boys played soccer in the backyard. Well, the 8-year-old and 6-year-old played soccer; the 2-year-old ran back and forth, always three steps behind both his brothers and the ball, shouting into the wind. His one attempt to get a kick in resulted in a Charlie-Brown-esque back-plant, at which point it was time to drag him inside for bath time, howling the whole way.

It’s hard to find games that all ages of children can play together, without the older ones getting bored and the little kids getting frustrated (or vice versa). An exception is tag, which most kids under 10 can get into, especially if you have some sort of wacky variation up your sleeve. A surprising crowd-pleaser is Alphabet Tag. You can vary the rules to suit children’s literacy level, but in the end, it gets everyone running, with a learning component to boot.

You need:

-Chalk. (You can’t beat Crayola’s, for its color selection and smooth-writing angled top):
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-A sizable and smooth asphalt or cement surface (like a driveway or blacktop)

How to play:

-Write letters A-Z, spacing them out and varying orientation and placement throughout the playing field
Big-kid variation: Encourage kids 5 and up to write the letters themselves.

-Designate a person who’s “it.” The person who’s “it” calls out a letter, and runs around the perimeter of the playing area once. The other players need to find the letter and try to beat whomever is “it” to the letter that was called. Big-kid variation: Choose a category for every round, such as fruit, countries, ice cream flavors, etc. The person who’s “it” calls out a word in that category, and runs around the perimeter of the playing field once. The other players find the first letter of the word and try to beat whomever is “it” to that letter.

-When a person is tagged before reaching the right letter, he or she becomes “it.”

If your children balk at the not-so-sly educational component of this particular game, remind them that you could, instead, be inside doing chores or paying bills while they figure out a game for themselves. I find that kids value pretty much any dedicated playtime with the busy grown-ups in their lives, and so I might as well engage them in something at least semi-enriching (as long as it’s fun, too, of course). And this is just the kind of game that can bring you right into the colder months of fall and even winter, as long as there’s no snow or ice to contend with.

Are Fit Kids Better Learners?

September 27, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

photo credit: KWDesigns via photopin cc

We’ve all been told that a good night’s sleep and a balanced breakfast are essential for making sure our kids are ready to learn on school mornings. But did you know that 10 jumping jacks might help jump-start their brains, too?

Two recent studies build on a growing body of research showing a strong link between heart-pumping activity and increased learning potential in kids. In brain scans of 9- and 10-year-olds, University of Illinois neurologists discovered that fitter kids had healthier “white matter”—which is related to more efficient neural activity— in their brains than less-fit children. Michigan State researchers, meanwhile, have found that a bout of physical activity before school helped kids be more attentive and perform better in math and reading skills.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to many childhood education specialists: Preschoolers and kindergarteners often start the day outside or with some sort of movement activity, because children seem better able to cope with circle time once they’ve gotten their energy out on the playground. But as kids age and curriculum demands grow, they typically move from bed to bus to desk chairs, where they’re expected to log an hour or more of quiet work until recess or P.E. Given the recent findings, this shift seems pretty arbitrary—and possibly counterproductive. Older kids clearly benefit from “shaking their sillies out,” too.

Many schools have already come to this conclusion. More than 1,000 schools across the U.S. have adopted the BOKS (Build Our Kids’ Success) program. Launched by mom Kathleen Tullie in 2009, it helps communities set up volunteer-led, before-school fitness games, like relay races and obstacle courses. In many towns, it’s allowed schools to make up for P.E. time lost due to budget cuts or academic curriculum constraints. (According to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, most elementary school students receive only between 33 and 66 percent of the recommended 150 minutes of P.E. classes per week.)

The Peter Woodbury School Playground. Photo credit: The Playground Project

Other schools offer physical activity before school to accommodate kids who need to be dropped early due to bus or parents’ schedules; and what starts out as a logistical necessity winds up benefitting kids. At the Peter Woodbury Elementary School in New Hampshire, kids are dropped off early, at 7:30 a.m., so the buses can leave to pick up middle schoolers. Because the building isn’t yet open to students, all grades start the day on a playground that’s uniquely designed with nature in mind. “There are 400-some kids out there playing all sorts of ball and adventure games before sitting down to learn, and all are having a blast,” says HHK adviser Curt Hinson, Ph.D, who’s observed the school while touring the country as a recess and P.E. consultant.

The only problem: If you’re like me, the thought of fitting an extra activity into the morning routine is mildly panic-inducing. Every last minute is packed—with breakfast making, shoe finding, shoe re-tying, and nagging, nagging, and more nagging. And yet, I know my high-energy boys would benefit from running-around time before school begins. Their school does open the gym and provide supervision in the hour before school to accommodate early-working parents. I think I’ll try to take advantage of that at least once a week, particularly as the weather gets colder and there are fewer opportunities throughout the day to get the kids outside.

I’ve researched some other ideas to help kids get moving more, both before and during school hours. Here are a few:

1. Take 10 minutes for tag at home. Tag requires no equipment, special skills, or prep time, and can be done practically anywhere. Although it may seem daunting, most of us could probably manage to build 10 extra minutes into our mornings to provide some tag time before or after breakfast—by setting the alarm a bit earlier, and packing lunches, and laying out clothes, shoes, and backpacks the night before. Try this variation if the same-old gets boring. (Older kids might be more game for a mini-jog around the neighborhood with you.)

2. Set up before-school playdates. Even if your school doesn’t have an early morning drop-off program, they may allow kids to play on the playground or in the gym as long as they’re supervised. (Be sure you check with the school beforehand.) Link up with a couple like-minded parents (who can also drive or walk their kids from time to time), and arrive on the early side for a 10-15 minute game of basketball or kickball before the bell rings. For more ideas, check out the BOKS website.

3. Talk to teachers about giving your child’s class “brain breaks.” Many schools already encourage this: stopping lessons in the middle to have children get up from their desks and stretch, do jumping jacks, or even dance for a couple minutes. To give the teacher ideas—and collect a few yourself to use during long homework stretches—check out the Scholastic book, Brain Breaks for the Classroom: Quick and Easy Breathing and Movement Exercises That Help Students Reenergize, Refocus, and Boost Brain Power Anytime of the Day.

4. Learn why you, too, may be clearer headed after that morning game of tag (or a jog or a Soulcycle class.) Read John J. Ratey’s Spark, which digs deep into the latest findings on the exercise-brain connection, in both kids and grown-ups.
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Why a Walk May Beat Circle Time

September 16, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

Any parent knows that getting a young child from point A to B swiftly can feel like an exercise in futility and battle of wills. You can almost see their little brains churning with ideas to escape the shackles of your hand and check out things that are far more interesting than the car, the house, or the Shop Rite: the filthy garbage can across the parking lot, say, or perhaps the thicket of poison ivy behind it. When this sort of thing happens with my curious 2-year-old, and it does constantly, I usually resort to picking him up and carrying him, which frustrates us both.

But do you know that children as young as 8 months old are actually programmed to explore? And that when they do, they actually use techniques that are the building blocks for scientific study: including developing hypotheses and testing them, making predictions, and inferring the causes of failed actions?

These are the findings of Alice Gopnik, Ph.D, a leading child psychology researcher and thinker who’s also a professor at University of California, Berkeley. She presented this research a couple years ago, and has since been a vocal supporter of giving kids more opportunity to interact freely with their surroundings, in a non-structured way. This, of course, is in stark opposition to the growing trend of enrolling younger and younger kids in classes and nursery school programs. (Not to mention parking them in front of “educational” apps. Guilty!) “What we need to do to encourage children to learn is not to put them in the equivalent of school, tell them things, give them reading drills or flash cards,” Dr. Gopnik has said. “We really need to put them in a safe, rich environment where the natural capacities for exploration, for testing, for science can get free rein.”

Obviously, parking lots (or even unfenced yards, for that matter) aren’t the best places to let a young child roam. But one of my goals of the fall is to give my youngest—who spends far more time in classes, car seats, and shopping carts than either of his older brothers ever did—more time “off the leash,” so to speak. I’ve found that something as short and sweet as a walk down the street, or a destination-less stroll around our local pond, seems to fill him delight. He almost always finds something I would have never noticed. Somedays, it’s an old gum wrapper. But the other day, it was some Queen Anne’s Lace and a lone baby carrot growing in a patch in our garden that I thought we’d fully harvested last month. (Inevitably, in these distraction-free outings, I wind up questioning and then discovering something as well; for instance, did you know that Queen Anne’s Lace is also known as “wild carrot?”)

While the act of exploring is, as Dr. Gopnik suggests, an end unto itself, I’ve found it fun with my kids to bring along a notebook or, in the case of little ones, a sheet of paper and a crayon with which we can record our findings; sort of a nature “I Spy.” They can circle or draw what they see, and be able to “report on” their discoveries with other family members later. Here’s a template of what I’ve been bringing along on our walks. Click on the image below and you can print it out for yourselves. It should be about 8 inches square when cut out, easy to fold up and tuck in a pocket.

Happy trails!

12 Best-Ever Outdoor Toys

September 1, 2014 by Kelley 3 Comments

As fall looms, retailers are trying to unload their outdoor gear to make way for school supplies and Halloween hoopla. Translation: deep discounts, making now, counterintuitively, a great time to stock up on outdoor playthings, many of which can be used indoors during colder weather, too.

Keeping a big bin or two well-stocked with interesting active toys is one of the best things you can do to get and keep your kids off the couch from season to season—and this may be especially true for girls, research suggests. So I asked Curt Hinson, Ph.D, a HHK advisory board member, what would be his top picks for age-spanning, gender-neutral toys that are least likely to collect dust in your garage, porch, or basement. As “Dr. Recess,” Dr. Hinson travels around the country to help kids get moving during free playtime, and sees firsthand what toys children in a variety of different neighborhoods are apt to return to again and again. The good news is, his picks aren’t pricey. In fact, the simplest toys often have the longest shelf-life, he says.

So, without further ado, here’s a list of must-have outdoor toys, with links to examples and descriptions below.

1. Sidewalk Chalk. Not just for doodles; create hopscotch game, ball or puck target, or an obstacle course for bikes or skateboards. BUY: Crayola 48-Count Sidewalk Chalk, $10

2. Frisbee/Flying Disc. Some fave uses: Tossing at targets (like trees) for points, or playing keep away. There are many variations to test out, but you can’t go wrong with a classic disc. Discraft has no less than 17 colors patterns, from “Ultra-Violet” to “Blue Orb.” BUY: Discraft 175 gram Ultra Star frisbee, $8-$18

3. Zoom Ball. A favorite of occupational therapists, ball on two ropes with handles, and you send it back and forth to each other. It’s fun to see how far you can make it travel. BUY: Zoom Ball Sliding Ball, $8

4. Wiffle Ball Set. Picnic table is first base, the oak tree is second base, neighbor’s vegetable patch is a home run (you get it). Once your child masters hitting a ball with a skinny wiffle ball bat, making contact with a classic baseball or softball bat will feel much easier. BUY: Wiffle Ball Bat and Ball Set, $6

5. Soccer ball. Kick it back and forth, play keep away, or try to hit targets in a backyard obstacle. Size guidelines: Buy 1 (mini) ball for toddlers, size 3 for 3-5 year olds, size 4 for 6-8 year olds, and size 5 for older kids. BUY: Vizari Astro Soccer Ball, $6-$20

6. Jump rope. Simple, cheap, and a great workout. Count how many times your child can jump without stepping on the rope. BUY: Green Toys Jump Rope, $10

7. Horseshoes. This traditional backyard game is loads of fun for kids. Try a rubberized version for safety’s sake. BUY: Champion Sports Rubber Horseshoe Set, $14

8. Skip Toy. There’s a lot of versions, from the Skip It to the Skipper. Like a jump rope, it’s simple, but even trickier (in a fun way) for bigger kids. BUY: Skipper, $7.

9. Hula Hoop. An addicting challenge, once you get the hang of it. Little ones can roll and chase them, or hop between them, across driveways or gyms. Buy a few and the game options grow. BUY: Wham-O Original Hula Hoop, Set of 3, $35

10. Lawn Darts. The plastic kind with rounded tips are safest. Try to toss them in opponents’ ring for to score points. BUY: Jarts, $16

11. Bubbles. Want to get a little kid running around? Blow some bubbles and challenge them to count how many they can pop. BUY: Super Miracle Bubbles, with Wand, $4

12. Balloons. See who can keep an inflated balloon up the longest using different body parts, or race across the yard, hitting the balloon as you go. Playing balloon “volleyball” over a line of couch cushions can keep kids of all ages busy during rainy or cold afternoon. Perhaps the king of all cheap, versatile toys, come to think of it. Fun Express Assorted Color Balloons, 144 for $7

Additional photo credits:

Hula Hoops: Elliot Mar

Zoom Ball: Unloveable

Frisbee: Annalisa

Family Fitness Ideas: Beach Games

August 14, 2014 by Kelley Leave a Comment

As August wanes, and the days get shorter and a frenetic fall schedule looms, we’re trying to eke out as as many beach days as we can. Of course, the concept of “beach day” has changed a bit from the pre-kid era of lounge chairs, paperbacks and people watching. Between the sunscreening and swim policing, being at the beach can feel like work when you’re a parent.

But once I stopped thinking about the beach as “me” time and more as family time, I’ve embraced the chaos, and see the beach as a precious time to play with my kids in a way that genuinely interests me a lot more than, say, floor time in February. There’s tag, sandcastle building, shelling, and of course body surfing. But there’s also an opportunity to play some really fun, active games that get the whole family into the mix. (And, bonus: Since running on sand expends 1.6 times the energy as running on a hard surface, your legs and butt can get an awesome workout out of the deal.)

HHK advisory board member Curt Hinson, Ph.D., who designs heart-pumping games for kids on a variety of surfaces, has shared his two fave, easy beach games, which involve little more than a couple balls and a couple kids. All you need to throw in your beach bag—along with the snacks, sunscreen, and the 16 broken buckets collected over years—is a basic beach ball and a soccer ball of any size. Check it out:

Photo by: Gareth Williams

BEACH BALL “HACKEY SACK”

Ages: 6 and up

Number of players: 3-6

Most of us parents remember hackey sack from the 90s. Well, this is a beach ball version, and a lot easier, and more fun.

Three-to-six players stand in a circle. One player starts the game by striking the ball up in the air with a hand. Whomever the ball comes to must hit the ball back up into the air, keeping it in the circle. If a person doesn’t keep the ball in the air when it comes his/her way or hits it outside of the circle, he/she receives a letter B. Play until one player has spelled the word B-E-A-C-H, and then everyone’s letters are erased and the game starts over.

BEACH SOCCER-GOLF

Photo by: Kevin Gong

Ages: 3 and up

Number of players: 2 or more

This soccer/golf/Bocce ball hybrid is easily adaptable to a variety of ages and number of kids.

Dig two holes in the sand about 15-20 feet apart. (Distance should be closer for littler tykes.) Each hole should be about twice the diameter of the ball being used and about 6-10 inches deep. Two players stand opposite each other, each at one of the holes. The first player kicks the ball in the sand towards the other player’s hole. If the ball roles in the hole, the kicker gets one point. The other player kicks the ball back, trying to get it into the other hole. The game continues, and the first player with 10 points wins and a new game starts. You can also play with three players in a triangle, four players in a square, or any even number of players on two teams.