I’ve been loving the fun obstacle course ideas I’ve been seeing on Pinterest lately, but I have to be honest — just the idea of setting some of them up makes me tired. Blowing up balloons? Hanging a rope swing? Digging the ladder out of the back of the garage? Er…no. I don’t think I’m going to do that.
Still, an obstacle course was one of the items on our Summer Fun List, so the kids and I set about creating a fun series of challenges in our backyard. The rules were simple: set up various stations around the yard and patio using only the stuff that was easily available outside. I started the kids off with a few ideas, but once they got a feel for what was realistic (“No, Augie — you can’t walk across the clothesline like a tightrope!”) and safe (“There will be no jumping off the roof of the shed!”) they both started churning out great ideas!
Here are a few of the easy-to-execute ideas they came up with:
Ride a scooter from the gate to the garage door. (Normally, I’m a helmet freak, but I let the helmets slide this one time because they were only scooting about 8 feet and they always had one foot on the ground.)
Bounce the basketball and hit a target drawn on the garage door with chalk.
Draw a picture on the driveway.
Spread the garden hose out in a loopy pattern on the grass. Walk on the hose like a tightrope until you get to the sprinkler at the end, then jump over the water spray. (I particularly liked this one because it was a team effort. One of the kids thought up the sprinkler idea, then the other thought up the hose idea.)
Crawl under a pool noodle set on top of two chairs.
Set a few chairs in a row, then walk across them.
Other stations they included that are not pictured included:
- Wade through the little pool. Smack the water with a pool noodle to make a big splash.
- Run in circles around three buckets set up in a row. (Or hop over each one.)
- Throw a frisbee into a cardboard box.
- Throw a ball into a bucket.
- Rotate the compost bin. (We have the spinning kind and it’s heavy so they had to do that as a team.)
What easy ideas would you include in a backyard obstacle course?
