Active Participation: Fun Games and Challenges

Challenge

To build an obstacle course, indoors or outdoors, that requires some kind of specific movement to get through the course, or a combination of movements, such as, running, hopping, jumping, balancing something on your head, doing the crab walk or bear walk, and so on.

Materials

Use your imagination, and whatever materials you have available.

Items to gather and things to consider:

  • Have a path to follow
    • Indoors – you may find it helpful to place tape on the floor (green painter’s tape doesn’t leave a sticky residue), or string to follow, pieces of paper to step on can also work
    • Outdoors – you could use chalk to make a path outside, skipping ropes, hula hoops, or sticks and stones to follow
  • The obstacles you can use to go around or avoid
    • Indoors – you can use furniture, cans of food, stuffed animals, pillows, toys, blankets to make forts that you crawl under, paper tubes, boxes, anything really
    • Outdoors – you can draw obstacles with chalk to go around, or bring things outdoors like balls, or pile-ons, hula hoops, or use things in nature (branches, rocks, leaves)

Almost ready…

  1. Gather your materials
  2. Map out your space
  3. Create the course
  4. Think of a movement to use for the course. The movement can change each time you do the course (e.g., jump with two feet the first time, then do the bear walk the second time), or from obstacle to obstacle (e.g., start with hopping on one foot and when you get to the pillows, slither like a snake until you get to the basket, then tiptoe to the wall)
  5. Set up large obstacles (e.g., you can put a blanket across two chairs and have your child crab walk or limbo under it)
  6. Set up some smaller obstacles (e.g., pick up a bouncy ball with your toes and carry it a distance, then drop it into a small container)
  7. Personalize what the activities to your child’s needs/interests (e.g. if it is burning energy have more things like rolling a dice and do that many jumping jacks, if it is to increase strength, have them do push-ups at a station or lift a bag of flour a specific distance)
  8. **Optional: to time the course, so when your child is done, they try it again to see if they can beat their own individual time.
  9. Finally, and most importantly, laugh and have fun!