I am so excited for my first official post as a Tampa Bay Mom’s Blog contributor. I am excited to share some fun crafts with you over the next few months.

Over Labor day weekend we took a family day trip to Fort DeSoto beach. We love the beach but we don’t get to go very often due to the 487 things you have to take and the 5,628,367 hours it takes to get packed up, set up, cleaned up and back home all for 1.5 hours at the beach. At the beach, my 2-year-old daughter loves to play in the sand, watch the fish and really loves the water. We used our beach day as an opportunity to gather supplies for a really fun craft.

Beach Craft
A few weeks ago I made my daughter an “I spy” pouch. I am always looking for different ways to create quiet activities for her. The one I made for her involved special materials and a sewing machine so I wanted to come up with something that non-crafty mom could also make. The filling for my I spy book was rice, but for today’s craft we are going to use beach sand.

How to Make An Easy “I Spy” Beach Pouch

To prep the beach sand, I rinsed it in fresh water and then baked it on a cookie sheets. My oven has a convection option, so I set it at 300 degrees and baked for 45 minutes. The rinsing and baking will help sanitize the sand for use in our craft.

Once the sand is sanitized and dry, begin accumulating the items for the I spy pouches. I went to the dollar store and also looked around my house for little items to put in the pouch. I decided on a quart size plastic freezer bag (using a freezer bag will make sure the plastic is thick enough) because my daughter is still small and I didn’t want it to be too heavy. For the quart size bag I accumulated about 10-15 items that are different shapes, sizes and colors (after completing this craft I would recommend using larger objects for the sand, the smaller items do not stand out as well in the dense sand as they do in the rice).

Place these items in the bag with 2 cups of the beach sand and squeeze out any excess air. To make it less likely to spill you can also put super glue in between the zippers and let it dry. I think it would be really fun to have a theme for the bag like pirates treasure but using a colorful objects is fun for a toddler. My toddler loves to move the bag around and see what she can find. As with any crafts and toys, be sure to supervise your child while they play as the small objects pose a choking hazard.