With all their energy and enthusiasm, small children are a perfect match for outside games. With a minimum of expense and equipment, you can organize simple games and entertain youngsters at birthday parties, on summer afternoons or during recess at preschool.
Scavenger Hunts
You can design a scavenger hunt for youngsters at the beach or park or in your back yard. On a list or map, draw or glue pictures of the items to find, and turn the kids loose. At the beach, they can hunt for shells, feathers and pieces of seaweed; at the park, they can look for twigs, feathers and stones. At home, you can hide whatever you like from garden tools to chewing gum.
Tag
Introduce young kids to entertaining varieties of tag. Hoop tag is a version in which hula hoops set on the ground are safe zones. Use two less hoops than the number of players. Everyone stands in a hoop except the person who's "it" and the person running away from "it." The runner tries to jump into someone else's hoop to avoid being tagged by "it." The player in that hoop must vacate it and jump into another hoop before he's tagged. If someone is tagged, he becomes the new "it."
Relay Races
Small children enjoy playing relay games and giggling as they go. Try a sponge relay, suggests the Games for Youth Groups website. Teams line up at the start, and the first player in line gets a sponge. She runs to the finish line where she dips her sponge in a tub of water. She returns to the team, squeezes her sponge into a bucket and hands the sponge to the next player. When everyone has finished, the winning team is the one with the fullest bucket.
Bowling
Let kids try their hands at outdoor bowling. You only need heavy paper cups and balls at least 5 inches across. Set up cups in a triangle just like you would with bowling pins, and hand a child a ball to roll toward the cups. Give the child as many chances as necessary to knock down the "pins."
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