Active Games and Outdoor Games for School

Welcome to the second day in my series of gameschooling.  Today: Active games and Outdoor games.

First, I want to give you a few benefits to active games or outdoor games:

• It’s a fun way to get exercise in.
• Active indoor games can burn energy on a day you can’t go outside.
• It’s a great way to practice those gross motor skills.
• Many also encourage fine motor skill practice.
• Some variations can be a fun way to practice skills in other content areas.

WHY YOU SHOULD PLAY ACTIVE GAMES TOO:

• Your kids love it when you get in on the action.
• It’s family bonding time, these minutes now will pay off big later.
• All of the reasons I listed for the kids, apply to you too.

ACTIVE GAMES TO BUY

I’m dividing this into two types of games, ones you can buy, and ones you can make/already own the materials. {heads up, there are affiliate links} [presented in the order I thought of them]

• Twister– this can be played both the traditional method, and by writing on the dots using dry erase or vis a vis markers.  If you choose to use the markers method, this can be turned into a review game and you throw bean bags onto the dots and read what’s on the dot (or any number of other ideas).
• Candy Land DVD Game– Honestly, I only got this game for the dots included, I quickly threw out whatever their plan was and we use this to make our own life-size board game.  I include the link so you can be looking out for this at garage sales and other places, DO NOT buy this at full price, it’s not worth it.  If you want to make your own, get some of the 12 inch felt squares, and you’ve got the same thing.  When the kids were little I used this as a fun way to work on learning colors.
• Cranium Hullabaloo– This is a great game for getting your kids to move around and keep an eye out for where things are, so it helps increase their visual discrimination, very important for reading.

HOMEMADE ACTIVE GAMES

• Activity Dice– role and do what it says.  I would also highly recommend getting an Education Cubes membership to get more dice ideas
• Pool Noodle Ring Toss– Great way to get your kids outside and practicing hand-eye coordination
• Make a mini-golf course-This lets you both have fun and work on some geometry.
• Bowling set, there are several of these: pumpkin bowling
• Hide and Seek with learning items- This is a popular one in our house, we’ve done this for lost sheep,
• Make an obstacle course in your house
• Indoor movement games, because we all need these on rainy days.
• 15 Fun backyard games, many many variations on the games we all loved growing up.
• Stair Ball, which I will never teach to my boys because they will escalate too much, that an our stairs are right next to some breakable things………  But, it does look fun, we could probably play it with a balloon.

I have many more active game ideas on my pinterest board:

Posts in this series:

• Day 1:  benefits of using games in school, and links of other reasons to play
• Day 2: Active Games/Outdoor Games
• Day 3: Preschool Games
• Day 4: Reading Games
• Day 5: Math Games
• Day 6: Geography Games
• Day 7: History Games
• Day 8: Science Games
• Day 9: Travel Games
• Day 10: Solo or Two Player Games