5 Fun Backyard Games for Children

Bowling with Recycled Bottles

Grab 10 empty plastic bottles of soda; make sure you clean them. Put them in the right order and draw a line (with tape or chalk) where the children will stand. If possible, play this game in the pavement in order to avoid the ball from moving a lot from side to side, if not, it’s totally fine to play it in the grass! Ask the children to make a line and you decide the number of games they’ll do. For the ball, you can use a small plastic ball, small fake baseball ball, nothing fancy. Whoever accumulates more points, wins!

Tip: for even more fun, you can ask your children to decorate the bottles! They can either color them using their favorite colors or paint them with real bowling colors.

DIY Tic-Tac-Toe

For this one you’ll need two different colors of spray painting and rocks. Paint a big pound sign on the grass and paint X’s and O’s on the rocks. After explaining the rules, your children can begin to play. You can make the rules on who starts: girls first, youngest to oldest, etc. Have fun!

Water Balloons

Summer is finally here and what a better way to refresh than with water? This one will be your children’s favorite!

We’ve all played a water balloons war so I bet you know how this works. In case you forgot, remember that you can play it using teams or individually. Give each person/team a bucket full of the same amount of balloons. Then whistle to start the friendly fight! When someone is hit, the other team scores a point. Whoever individual/team has more points in the end, wins!

Twister

For this activity, you’ll also need spray painting (green, yellow, blue and red). Paint 5 full circles (where the children’s feet can fit) of each color in a straight line. No two people can have a hand or foot on the same circle. This game allows up to 5 players. Remember that the options are: right foot, right hand, left foot and left hand. You can turn around and start shouting the options (e.g. red – left foot). Whoever falls first, loses, and has to leave the game; whoever is the last person, wins!

Water Balloon Baseball

Fill some balloons with water, put them in a bucket and start throwing them at your children, whoever explodes more balloons with the plastic baseball bats, wins! Enjoy this precious time with your children!