Ideas for Outdoor Fun at Home

Hide and seek is one of the best childhood games for kindergartners or preschoolers to play with bigger siblings! The person who is "it" covers her eyes and counts while the other players hide. The seeker must find all of the other players, and the last one to be found becomes the new seeker. You can play variations where the seeker must tag the other players, or where there is a home base that the hiders need to reach to become safe.

Ghost in the graveyard is an especially fun outside game to play at night in the dark. The object of the game is to find the "ghost." This is the player who is hiding. The player who finds the ghost’s hiding spot yells “Ghost in the Graveyard” to alert the other players as to where this person was hiding. The player who finds the ghost is designated as safe. All the other players must race back to space designated as the base. The ghost tries to tag someone else before they do and that player is IT for the next game.

Four square has been the go-to outdoor game for us. Draw one large square (8-10 feet across) with chalk and divide it into four equal squares. Squares are numbered 1-4, and one player stands inside each square. Player 4 bounces and taps a playground ball into an opponent's square to start play. When the ball enters any player's square, he or she must tap the ball into another square. Any player who misses the ball, lets it bounce more than once, or sends it out of bounds must move to square 1, and all other players move up one square.

Sharks and minnows is fun, and it gets played a lot at school. Players stand along a starting line, and must reach the finish line without being tagged by the shark. Any minnows who are tagged by the shark become sharks, too. Repeat racing across until all remaining minnows have been tagged. The winner is the last minnow to be tagged.

A ping pong ball hunt is a fun pool game for kids who like a little competition. Number as many ping pong balls as possible, starting with 1 and going up to as many as you have - 25 to 30 work well. Divide players into two teams, give each a container for collecting the balls, then toss the balls into the pool and have players collect as many of them as they can. Add up the numbers on the balls to see who wins! You can introduce a bunch of variations on this game for fun, like only allowing players to collect a single ball at a time, or assigning teams to collect only certain balls (like odds/evens).

Octopus is a variation on swimming pool tag that is especially fun to play with a lot of people. One person starts off as the Octopus, and tries to tag all the other players as they swim across the pool. When a player is tagged, that player and the Octopus have to hold hands, and work together to keep trying to tag other players. Anyone who is tagged joins the Octopus chain, and everyone in the chain has to hold hands in order to tag the other players. If too many players join the chain (making it difficult to swim), you can break up into multiple Octopus chains.

Categories - pool style! - is a variation on pool tag, where the player who is "it" stands outside the pool, facing away from it, while all the other players remain inside the pool next to them. "It" chooses a category - colors, animals, states, Harry Potter characters, etc - and all the other players have to pick something from that category, without telling anyone what they pick. "It" starts to call out names/things related to the category, and if a player's selection gets called, they have to try and swim to the other end of the pool before "it" hears them and jumps in to tag them.

Keepy Uppy is an equally fun game to play in the pool as it is out of the pool! Just keep a beach ball (or two or three) up in the air as long as possible.

We buy small Graham cracker crusts (in the tiny pan) and add chocolate chips or pieces of chocolate bars. Then top with small marshmallows. Perfect on a grill or oven!

S'mores nachos: lay out graham crackers on a skillet and top them with mini chocolate kisses and mini marshmallows. Toast and enjoy! Add more toppings if you want too (i.e., peanuts, coconut, m&ms)

Thinly sliced apple, caramel sauce, marshmallow and graham crackers

Nutella, marshmallow and graham crackers

Set up a little frisbee golf course in the backyard and use a laundry basket as the target. The player with the fewest tosses to get their frisbee into the basket wins!

We recently discovered creeking from our park center super fun and free lots of activities too. I found it on the events tab on Facebook I’ve never done anything like it before but it was fun for my tot and myself .

The geocaching app is a huge hit with my kids! There is a free option, but the $6.99 option has more caches to find. My kids (7 and 9) have so much fun with this in our neighborhood and also parks and paths nearby!

Water painting the driveway or patio is a great use for old paint brushes that are past their prime. Just give the kids a small bucket of water and some paint brushes.

Measuring cups of different sizes and shapes create ceaseless fun pouring and dumping; dumping and pouring for hours.

Add plastic/foam letters or numbers to the water and have kids “fish” them with a toy fishing rod, large spoon or spatula. If they are ready, you can have them fish for particular letters or numbers to help reinforce alphabet/number recognition.

Robo Alive Fish. These life like “robot” fish swim and dive when submerged in water. Turn your water table, bathtub, or pool into an artificial aquarium. These fish are mesmerizing and fun for young and older children.

Play Sink or Float. This simple toddler science experiment is a favorite at our house! Collect items that can safely get wet (utensils, plastic toys, fruit, rocks, etc.), then take turns placing them in the water table to see if they will sink or float.