Creative fun outdoor games

International Brand Manager, Edx Education. Playing and Learning is a Family Adventure. Keri Wilmot. Occupational therapist and toy expert. Yesim Kunter. Talia Filippelli. Avital Schreiber Levy. A rowdy game of rocket toss is easy and inexpensive to put together. Use colorful duct tape to decorate ounce metal cans. This will be the "rocket" that kids can toss at the cans.

Give each birthday party guest three tries to knock down all the cans. Don't throw away those empty bleach bottles—transform them into an outdoor catching game for kids!

Make a mazelike pathway through fallen leaves, and birthday party attendees can race through it. Rake a curving path through fallen leaves.

No leaves in sight? Use rope or grass clippings and sticks to form the maze. Have kids race together through the maze, or use a stopwatch to time each child.

Make a splash at your child's summer birthday party with a fun water game. For each team, string a plastic bucket on a length of clothesline; make the lines the same length to be fair. With the buckets at one end of the clothesline, arm each team with a hose or large squirt guns.

Using only water, the teams must race to move their bucket to the other end of the line. Editor's Tip: Make this fun game for kids even wilder. Arm a team with water balloons to use as obstacles and distractions while the other team tries to push its bucket across the finish line. Little ones will enjoy this fun twist on badminton. Use homemade foam rackets to keep the colorful balloon off the ground.

Nature is calling for a game of tic-tac-toe. Provide flower heads from your garden, or let children explore your yard for flower heads, stones, leaves, or other bits of nature to use as game pieces. Editor's Tip: Alert parents about your plans for an outdoor party and ask about their children's allergies. Make sure to have silk flowers on hand, just in case.

You may not have a built-in checkerboard in your backyard, but it's easy to set one up for a birthday party. Cut large squares from sturdy poster board, and tack them to the ground in a checkerboard pattern. Use plant stakes or other stakes with rounded tops for safety. Or chalk up your driveway to create the board. Make big beanbags or use two colors of Frisbee disks for the checkers.

Have kids take turns moving their pieces across the board. Set up teams to involve everyone in the fun. Editor's Tip: You can also use large square flooring tiles to make the board. Inexpensive tiles are available at home improvement stores. On-the-go kids will love wheeling and squealing on this obstacle course.

Ask each child to bring his or her favorite set of wheels. It's a good idea to have a few extra vehicles available. To create the course, arrange orange cones or other soft items in your yard or a nearby park. Include curves, turns, and small hills, depending on the ages and abilities of your racers.

Fuel the kids' excitement by timing each racer as he or she pedals to the finish line. To make the course more challenging, set up stations along the way where children must stop to perform a task, such as blowing bubbles. Pumpkins aren't just for the porch! Make the most of the season's harvest with this easy outdoor game of tic-tac-toe. Who's the fastest of them all? Set up an outdoor course and find out! Beat the summer heat with this cool kids birthday party game. Blocks of ice become the base for this pretty painted game.

Simply drip washable tempera paint onto frozen ice shapes and get melting! As the ice melts, it will create cool paint designs. An old-fashioned favorite, pickup sticks gets a gigantic twist when the sticks are as big as the kids.

Paint the ends with bright colors: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple, for example. To start the game, drop the sticks on the ground in a big messy pile, and let the kids take turns picking up a stick. If a stick other than the one the child is removing wiggles, the child must return the stick and forgo his or her turn.

At the end, the player with the most sticks wins. Editor's Tip: Add a challenge to the game by assigning each player a color. The first player to successfully remove all the sticks of the assigned color wins the party game. All it takes is a few dice to get the party started!

You can make these outdoor dice with wood, but we chose small cardboard boxes—perfect for younger children. Have a little Picasso on your hands? Get painting outside! Set up all the materials kids will need to paint or draw outside in a space surrounded by nature.

Let each child create their own work of art inspired by flowers, plants, and nature. Try making homemade sidewalk chalk paint and letting the kids decorate your driveway. Set up a fun game of DIY disc golf right in your backyard!

To create this outdoor game for kids, hang an oversized hula hoop from a branch or clothesline. Try a fun take on the classic game of catch.

Have each player throw the disc through the hoop. The first one to complete ten shots wins! Beat the summer heat with a game of squirt bottle tag. The child who stays dry the longest wins. This summer craft for kids doubles as a fun outdoor game! Have each child create their own paper airplane using construction paper and tape or glue.

Once the planes are completed, head outside and see which ones take flight. The paper plane that goes the furthest wins. Keep the kids entertained with the cheap outdoor activity idea. Create an oversized version of one of our favorite classic summer games—croquet. To make, use wooden dowels to stake pool noodle arches into the ground.

Be sure to make the arch tall enough that an inflated beach ball can pass under it. To play, give each child their own pool noodle and see who can get the ball through the arches first. These are fun DIY games. We decided to round up 25 creative outdoor games to keep you and your kiddos busy all year long!

Pool Noodles are crazy cheap and so easy to use to create fun games like this fun race track! I can imagine my kids would have so much fun racing cars. This is such a fun and unique game that I haven't seen in ages.

This is it in its giant form! Giant Kerplunk is lots of fun for the whole family! Have you played the game Angry Birds?? It's kind of addicting! Imagine playing this giant outdoor version. This is so simple, yet so perfect!! Racing colorful balloons filled with water If you drop a balloon, you'll instantly feel a bit cooler!

This is such a great game for kids of all ages! Not only is it fun, but ring toss will help improve hand-eye coordination as well! We love corn hole! This DIY version is so bright and fun! If you've never played, you are missing out Are you not dying to make these fun sprinklers??

We're definitely putting these sprinklers on our outdoor to-do list this Summer! Get your kids out there practicing their aim with this fun Balloon Dart Board!! We've also seen this done with balloons filled with paint Turn a game into a little bit of artwork! Classic outdoor games like hopscotch are also fun! Check out some other fun games you can do with chalk. Do your kids love building towers and tearing them down?? Here is a more constructive way to build and tear down