-Number of participants is 2 per "alley"
Set up a bowling alley on the beach! Take a paper or plastic disposable drink cup, fill it with moist sand, invert the cup, and carefully empty the cup of its sand. The sand should be molded into a short tower-shaped object, which will be one of the "bowling pins". Continue making ten of these in total and position them in a triangular bowling pin pattern, as shown in the diagram. You will also need a ball about the size and weight of a softball. Find a good stick for writing in the sand. Decide how far away from the "pins" the bowler should be. Draw a line in the sand that the bowler cannot cross when rolling the ball.
Each bowler should designate an area in the sand for their scorecard / recording space by writing their initials or name and drawing a large empty box under it. Each bowler gets one roll per turn. Before they roll the ball, the bowler writes in their recording space in the sand the number of "pins" standing.There are 10 pins standing at first, so they should write "10". Next, they roll the ball to knock down as many of the pins as they can. Let's say they knocked down 3 pins. Now they will write this as a minus, so alongside the "10" they will write "- 3". They will complete the number sentence by writing how many pins are left standing, or 7. They should have written 10-3=7 in their recording space in the sand. Save this recording.
The other bowler takes their turn. They follow the same procedure as the previous bowler, but of course their number sentence will start with a 7, since that is the number of pins left for them to bowl down. This bowler should save whatever subtraction fact they wrote.
Players keep going until all of the "pins" have been knocked down . New "sand pins" will be built and the player who went last in the previous game gets to go first in this one.
The game continues until each player has had an opportunity to be first 3 times.
Players should tally the number of pins they knocked down in all games. Player who knocked down the most pins is the winner.
This seems like such a great way to keep little ones busy at the beach.
Thank you for your response. The beach is a great place to get "educational with play". How about scratching reading words into the sand where the waves meet the shore and reading the word before the next wave "erases" (washes away)it? Hope you enjoy these freebies. Visit and take away as much as you like.