Classic Outdoor Games
Several classic outdoor games are perfect for family nights and can be enjoyed by both kids and adults. Capture the Flag is a timeless favorite that involves strategy and teamwork [1:1]. Hide and Seek, especially at night, adds an element of thrill and nostalgia, making it fun for all ages
[1:2]. Tag and three-legged races also provide energetic fun and laughter
[1:1],
[5:5].
Water-Based Activities
Water activities are particularly popular in warmer climates or during summer months. Slip-and-slide setups can offer hours of entertainment and cooling relief [1:4],
[2:2]. Water balloon fights and using sprinklers are other interactive ways to enjoy water play
[2:7]. For a creative twist, consider organizing a "paint party" with water guns filled with colored water
[2:7].
Creative Competitions
For families looking for artistic and competitive activities, sidewalk chalk competitions can stimulate creativity and friendly rivalry [2:1]. Painting rocks with glitter glue can be a fun craft that results in beautiful decorations for your garden
[2:1].
Team Sports and Physical Games
Team sports like soccer, volleyball, and wiffle ball are great for larger groups and encourage physical activity [1:3],
[2:2],
[5:2]. Cornhole is another popular choice that combines skill and social interaction
[1:3],
[5:3].
Scavenger Hunts and Geocaching
Scavenger hunts are easy to organize and can be tailored to the environment, whether it's a park or backyard [5:5],
[5:6]. Geocaching adds an adventurous twist, encouraging exploration and discovery
[2:8],
[5:4].
These activities can cater to different interests and age groups, ensuring a memorable and enjoyable family night outdoors. Consider the preferences and dynamics of your family when choosing the best games to play.
Hide and seek.
Played it at night every year growing up and well into adulthood whenever our family would all get together at my cousins' house in upstate New York. They had a big property with hills and woods and all kinds of hiding places. We had a safety area, which was where the person who was "it" counted to 50. If you were hiding, you had to make your way to the safety area which was right out in the open, preferably without being spotted and definitely without being touched.
It was always a lot of fun. Over the years when some of the older cousins started having kids, as those kids got older, they joined in as well. We had people of all ages playing.
Beersby, wiffle ball, football, soccer, corn hole
Everybody loves slip and slides.
mother may I, green light red light, 1v1 football
Capture the Flag, frisbee golf, and the chaotic joy of a three-legged race. Just watch out for those epic wipeouts!
Hi everyone! I am looking for ideas for things to get us outside this weekend and still social distance. My step daughter who is 8 is always on her iPad so I would love to do other activities. So far we have played with bubbles, water balloons and played catch. We are in Texas so water is a win for us but our community pool is still closed. Does anyone have any other fun things for the family to do together? Thank you!
sprinkler, slip-and-slide, geocaching, hiking, soccer, volleyball, bike rides, bird watching...
also in Texas, so I feel your pain
last weekend I bought a portable projector and screen so we could watch movies outside. That was pretty cool
here in Houston there are several places doing drive-in movies - we did this for the first time on Monday and it was a pretty neat experience.
I completely forgot about geocaching. Thanks!
You mention she loves water, so I might look around for an easy hike to a small stream near you. I used to love sitting in a small stream on a hiking trail, cooling off, looking for shiny rocks in the stream, splashing my brother, and making leaf boats to race while our mom read her book on a rock. On the hike, have a contest to see who can spot the most animals, tell stories, etc. Added bonus of the hike tiring the kiddos out making for a very quiet car ride home for you :).
Chalk competition! Sidewalk chalk drawings you and your family can compete in:) or paint rocks, glitter glue works great and then they sparkle in the sun!
Chalk competition! What an awesome idea. I love that, thanks!
We have been looking for birds and nests, playing badminton (badly but improving), riding scooters, climbing trees, jumping rope.
My sister bought some water guns and filled buckets with food-colouring water, my kids and niece all wore goggles and white shirts. Basically a kids paint party. Now it’s the only thing they want to do.
I’m going to be camping for a week with a large group and am looking for good game/activity ideas that aren’t too big or bulky.
I’ll have a deck of cards and I got a folding set of mancala so far.
Taboo is a great one that you really only need the cards to play. Aerobie is also fun to play with. Squirt guns if the kids aren’t gonna be little bastards.
If you are imaginative, you can play pretend with the kids while they are on a nature walk or just around camp. Me and my friends spent so much time playing lord of the rings or Star Wars when we were little, and it was awesome when an adult would join in and play with us.
Gateway drug to roleplaying and larping, I love it!
Fun for the whole family!
Kubb (Scandinavian outdoor game)
Molkky (Scandinavian outdoor game with math)
Have read about it but rather went for Kubb as math after a few beers sucks😂
But we will probably make a set ourselves as it definitely looks interesting.
Just played for the first time and I came to recommend this! You can have up to 12 people play at once too.
12 people sounds like a nightmare 😂 We have played Kubb with teams of 3 with no hassle though.
I can’t believe I only discovers the games like 3 years ago. Lots of fun, pretty much all ages and nearly no risk of injuries (unless you step into a rabbit hole).
The quiet game.
Hated that game as a kid.
As an adult, dice games are fun because they're fast paced and can be used as a drinking game as well. And you can get a pack of like 100 dice on Amazon for like 10 bucks.
Fun ones include:
Liars Dice - you need plastic cups for this and table though. Everyone has 5 dice and you shake your dice once at the beginning of the game and say things like "Four 3's", meaning you are saying among all of the people's dice you believe there are four of the 3 dice. You can't see the other's dice unless someone says a number too high and you call them out and open your cup. The game is actually very strategic, you have to bluff and know when to up the ante. Also, if you roll a 1,2,3,4,5 (no pairs) then none of your dice count in the end, which is good usually actually. And, if you roll 5 of the same number, you're given a bonus of +1, so 5 of the 3's equals you having actually "6" of the 3's. This is by far the most popular drinking game in China. And it is.. Quite effective haha.
Cee Lo - everyone has 3 dice. If you roll a double of anything (it doesn't matter) and the last dice is your number. 4, 4, and a 6 for example. Your number is 6. If you get 4,5,6 (called Cee Lo) you auto win. If your number is a 6 you auto win. If you get triples (called trips) you auto win. If you get 1,2,3 or your number is a 1 you auto lose. You keep rolling into you have one of those winning/losing combos or you have 2 doubles and get another number as your number. But if you get 5 "nothings", you lose. This is the most popular street gambling dice game in the eastcoast, but it's a fun game to play just for fun or as a drinking game as well.
Shut up and go to sleep, quit whispering, stop throwing logs and rocks on the fire and no I won’t walk 200feet into the woods with you to pee are my favorites
Finally found someone who actually camps with kids. Lol
Chemicards. it’s like Uno on steroids.
Wits & Wagers, Letter Jam, Take 5, No Thanks, Love Letter.
Ouija
Risk. World domination
If you’re in Alabama, spin the bottle
Hello.
Tomorrow there is a family party which means likely my nephews (10-15yrs) will come over. For the past year and a half I've been trying to come up with fun activities to play with them - for example making word search puzzles for them to solve, a game where one person draws a slightly different object from all the others, outdoor games of Hide&Seek, Tag and the like. But right now I'm kind of having the writer's block variant of making ideas for activities to do with them. I'd prefer to do some outdoor activities to keep them off their phones but it might rain tomorrow so any ideas are welcome.
What activities did you like to do with friends/relatives at parties when you were a teenager?
Edit: Probably I should give some context because so far I've been given all the typical games that we wouldn't play. Most of the time when we're outdoors we're often doing hide and seek variants, sometimes tag and sometimes a murder-mystery type of game. Whenever we go play outdoors we don't use equipment. So no balls or frisbees or anything that requires the use of objects. For indoors, again all we ever use is mostly pen and paper. Generally, if whatever you want to suggest to me requires that I need to purchase an object if I don't have it yet, don't suggest it, I won't purchase anything because so far pen and paper and just being our wacky selves outdoors has worked out great.
if you have the space you could get a wiffle ball set and play in the yard- I always enjoyed playing that as a kid
I am not the type of person to make sudden purchases just for a nice party gig.
Also, we wouldn't like to play this anyway. Let's say we're one phase older than this.
If I could get someone to toss the Frisbee back and forth with me, I was a happy kid. I wasn't into sports, but a lot of kids that age like basketball or football. Card games or board games if the conditions permit (Phase 10, Monopoly, Sorry, etc). Some dollar store squirt guns and a 5 gallon bucket of water to fill from. A Cornhole set, if someone has access.
I've got discs designed for disc golf but that's not for tossing at each other - speaking from experience as during my last round, an uncle of mine almost hit me 3 different times.
A lot of the other suggestions would require me to purchase something last-minute. Do you have any object-free outdoor games? Or games that require nothing more than pen & paper? Anything that requires the use of something I would judge myself with whatever I already have.
Scavenger Hunt.
I don't consider myself creative enough to be able to prepare such an event in less than a day.
Maybe geocaching is an option but that would probably take way too long for both my and my family's liking.
Scavenger hunts don't have to take much preparation. Just make a list of common items seen in parks, set an arbitrary time limit, and offer the person who brings the most a prize. $20 or something. Here's an example:
A Pinecone
An Acorn
An old soda can
A coin made before 1980
A yellow rock
A bobby pin
A 4 leaf clover
A feather
A blue flower
Beer bottle cap
You can even toss in items that you don't think exist in the park like an Easter egg, foreign currency, a walnut (when there are no walnut trees there), etc. or adventure items like sand from the north shore of a local stream, a rock from the top of the tallest hill in the park, or a branch from a specific tree or type of tree. Also, throw in ridiculous items like a dinosaur egg or a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible.
Make the list long enough to keep them thoroughly busy throughout the time limit.
What’s the best outdoor camping Game? Need ideas!
how many people? How old are said people?
Pokemon Go?
Golf
Power hour
Find the tick… works best with your significant other.
Outdoor birthday party for my daughter, nieces and nephews. Struggling to think of games we can all have a go at playing together. I’m more than happy to make things myself but don’t really want to buy things. Garden is quite large, several trees and long hedges.
Ages are 2, 3, 3, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14.
Going to have an Easter Egg hunt, easier places for little ones, up higher for bigger kids.
Any ideas how to tie legs together for a three legged race?! Or any outdoor games that the majority will be able to play without buying new stuff?
Thanks!
Poor man's golf or corn hole are always fun.
Ah never heard of corn hole but just googled and sure I can DIY that with some rice filled socks or similar! Thanks.
It plays like horseshoes, but with out flying metal in the air.
Red rover was always fun as a kid haha
It’s only fun until the kids get bigger/stronger… a good friend of mine dislocated his shoulder playing that! I do not recommend it for teens
Ok just had a google and looks pretty manageable! Thanks
Sack races (hopping like bunnies kind of goes with your Easter theme). You can use pillow cases for the sacks.
Pin the tail on the bunny (instead of donkey). Easy to DIY.
Egg toss game or egg drop challenge.
Scavenger hunt.
Obstacle courses, made from whatever you have around.
Bubbles, balloons, and sidewalk chalk are all cheap and always a hit.
Maybe throw in some classics- Freeze tag. Freeze dance. Musical chairs. Hide and seek. Simon Says. Limbo.
Ahh pin the tail on the bunny sounds fun! Thanks for all the ideas, fab.
Playing ball games is always fun. Maybe a little arts and crafts station (if you have supplies at home)
Bean bag toss
Dollar store has very cheap materials as well - like frisbee, boomerangs, hula hoops etc.
Race with a spoon while balancing an egg
“The human knot” (you can look up this game, it’s fun)
Pulling rope game
Red light/green light game (from “squid game”😁)
Hope this helps (also google and YouTube have many more great ideas 😉)
Can’t believe I hadn’t already thought of an egg and spoon race! That’s on the list now. Thanks for your ideas, v much appreciated.
Freeze Tag was my favorite, also my best friend and I usually played a game called dog catcher where me and her would pretend to be dogs and our male best friend was the dog catcher and If we made it to the secret base(the slide usually) he couldn't get us. Thinking back it was basically tag with a twist.
Lol! I think there are a lot of games out there like tag with a twist. I mean, how can you go wrong with the basics of tag? A great game and almost anyone can play. We had hours of fun with this in our neighborhood!
Hide and seek, tag, statues/red light green light. We did play red rover but I didn't like it much because I was smaller and would get hurt. The bigger kids were rough. Otherwise we played on swings, slides, bikes, big wheels, roller skates. We built volcanoes in the sand box and made them erupt with baking soda and vinegar. We played with the sprinkler, hose or water guns in summer. In winter we built snow men, igloos and had snow ball fights.
In school we played jump rope, four square, war, dodgeball, kick ball, tug of war during recess or PE outdoors. I liked jump rop and four square best. I was not good at a lot of team games or sports so they were not very fun.
Yep, dodge ball was the game that I did not care for. The boys threw the ball so hard it sometimes hurt, especially in middle school.
I'm 15 right now so we still do stupid s*** but one of our favorite games is sneak out into the woods behind my house at night and climb the tallest tree we can find the last one to chicken out wins my friend one the last time buy climbing 70 ft I was in second with 50 my other friend was in last with 55 ( those are very rough estimates we make by looking at the tree and where we were)
Wow, climbing trees can be challenging, particularly 70 footers. The competition would be crazy fun however. I hope nobody falls!!!
So far Noone has but I fell 20 ft once but was ok
I never could play outdoor with friends at all. My country is not known as really safe for kids to do that depending on where exactly you live (there are a lot of people who do this btw! My mom never let me). To me, I never had any close neighbours also, but I did have gone to some friends houses often! Then we used to play some things like hide n' seek, tag etc.
Besides that, one of my biggest regretings regards my childhood is that I never learnt how to ride a bike. Even today I just CAN'T. :D
Glad that you had some safe friends houses to play at. As for bike riding, I was going on twelve years old before I could ride. I was so scared of falling and scraping my knees up. Finally, my mom in frustration told me, “You get on that bike and ride!” She knew I could do it, and it worked. Maybe you need someone to tell you that?
That's fair lol! I'm also really scared of ending up hurt, but I know that someday I'll get to learn it somehow.
My wife and i's new baby will be here real soon. My backyard is a good size and when he comes I plan to spend some time outdoors with my daughter to keep her busy. I'm super pumped that new baby is coming while the weather in CT is getting warmer.
After work most days my wife, daughter and dog go for walks and when we get back we spend time outside before dinner. We have a playscape with a slide and swings which my daughter loves, a disc golf goal for her to pick up frisbees and place in them, we have a sled back that she likes to pull around and there's the dog's tennis balls that she throws around around.
My goal is to keep her busy and her mind curious while we're outside though I can see her eventually getting bored with the things we currently have.
Any recommendations ?
Thanks in advance.
Sand and/or water table with vehicles/animals/containers
Pop up tent
Ride on car/trike
Another vote for water table.
And a stomp rocket.
Looked up stomp rockets on Amazon and added it to the cart immediately. 😆
Appreciate the help.
Water table, balls, balance bike
1.5…. Dirt, flowers, seeds, sticks… you don’t need much.
My kid loves her sandbox, and did at that age, too. Put her in with a few buckets and some shovels, and she'd happily play for awhile while we sat on the hammock.
A mud kitchen might be fun, too, OP, if you can manage it.
Looked into it and will consider. Thanks !
Dominion, Terraforming Mars, Evolution, Mexican Train Dominoes, Ticket to Ride, Space Base, Alhambra, Azul, and Settlers of Catan.
Magic the gathering!
We play "Ludo" 😅
best outdoor games for family night
Here are some great outdoor games for family night:
Cornhole: A classic bean bag toss game that’s easy to set up and fun for all ages. It encourages friendly competition and can be played in teams.
Bocce Ball: This game involves throwing balls to get as close as possible to a smaller target ball (the pallino). It's simple to learn and great for all ages.
Frisbee: A versatile game that can be played casually or competitively. You can play ultimate frisbee or just toss it around for fun.
Capture the Flag: A fun team game that encourages strategy and teamwork. It’s perfect for larger spaces and can be played with various age groups.
Giant Jenga: A larger version of the classic game that adds an exciting twist. It’s great for building tension and laughter as the tower gets taller.
Sack Race: A fun and active game that involves hopping in a sack to the finish line. It’s simple to set up and can be a hilarious competition.
Outdoor Scavenger Hunt: Create a list of items for family members to find around the yard or park. This encourages exploration and teamwork.
Recommendation: Consider mixing a few of these games to keep the night dynamic and engaging. For example, start with a round of cornhole, then move to a scavenger hunt, and finish with bocce ball. This variety keeps everyone entertained and allows for different skill levels to shine. Don't forget to have some snacks and drinks on hand to keep the energy up!
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