Outdoor lawn games offer an opportunity for the whole family to stay active outside during the warmer months. Most popular lawn games require some equipment, but you can set the games up in your own backyard. You can follow the rules of the games as strictly or loosely as you wish.
Croquet
To play croquet, you need wickets, stakes, croquet balls and croquet mallets. Set up the wickets, thin white arches, and stakes, thin wooden sticks, on a relatively flat section of closely mowed grass. If you have a sloped or hilly backyard, consider the hills an added challenge. Give each player a ball and a mallet. Players begin the course at one stake, try to hit their balls through each wicket in the correct order and then return their ball to the original stake. Players take turns hitting their balls. If you hit your ball through a wicket, you get one extra stroke. If you hit your ball through a double wicket, you get two extra strokes. You also can get bonus strokes for hitting an opponent's ball, an action known as roqueting.
Bocce
In bocce, a popular lawn game with Italian origins, players compete to toss their bocce balls closest to a target ball called the pallina or the jack. You can play this game individually or in teams of two or four players. You can play bocce on a flat or hilly surface covered with sand, grass, dirt or even pavement. Divide the eight bocce balls among the players. If two players are competing individually, they each get to throw four balls. Teams of two get to throw two balls each, and teams of four get to throw one ball each. The player going first tosses the pallina. That player then tosses her bocce ball toward the pallina. In bocce, players throw their balls until they have none left or until their ball is closest to the pallina. The first player's ball will always be closer to the pallina than any other players' balls, so the first player will always throw only one ball. After the first ball, players or teams take turns throwing the balls until all have been thrown. Players can aim toward the pallina or try to knock their opponent's bocce balls out of scoring position. At the end of the round, the player whose ball sits closest to the pallina wins the round and wins one point for each of his balls that sits closer to the pallina than his opponent's closest ball. Play to a previously decided upon point total.
Badminton
Though competitive badminton requires a standard court and net, you can play with an informal set-up in your backyard. You can install your own badminton net or simply play without a net. In a variation of the sport known as Speedminton, players hit the shuttlecock back and forth between two 18-foot by 18-foot squares separated by 42 feet of space. Players win points by hitting the shuttlecock to the ground within the bounds of the opponent's square. In standard badminton matches, players hit the shuttlecock back and forth over the net, winning points by hitting the shuttlecock to the surface of the opponent's side of the court. You can play singles or doubles badminton.
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