Last week I was sitting on the porch steps (yes, being a lazy nature lover) and the kids were begging me to get out in the grass and play with them. But I just couldn’t muster up enough creativity or energy to do so. Suddenly, inspiration hit! I told Lydia we would play a special game. We would start a mini-game and when I yelled STOP, she had to freeze until I told her what the next mini-game was. She was thrilled!

We played this game for an hour at least. Each mini-game lasted anywhere between 1 minute and 10 minutes depending on how much she liked it. When I yelled STOP she would freeze (and giggle) until I gave new instructions.

We have done this several days since then usually at her request. Here are some of her favorite mini-games:

1. Nature Soup–pick 10 different pieces of nature and put them in a bucket, mix, “cook” and serve to everyone else.

2. Rock Names–find one rock for each letter of your name. Place in order on the ground.

3. Animal Mimic–pretend to be a monkey {oooh! oooh! eee! eee! aah! aah!, search for bananas and pick fleas out of each others’ hair}, a bunny {hop up and down, wiggle your nose, look for clover and look for your bunny burrow} or other favorite animals.

4. Hopping Patterns–make patterns out of hopping or steps (ie. jump on one foot, two feet, two feet, one foot; giant step, baby step, hop} and see how many times you can do it before messing up.

5. Personal Relay–run to a bush, pick one leaf and then bring it back to starting point. Continue until you have collected  5 leaves.

6. Knothole Sidewalk Chalk–use the knotholes on your porch to create sidewalk chalk illustrations. We make bunnies, flowers, birds and our favorite–owls!

7. Nature Collection–send kids on a scavenger hunt to find specific items {ie. 3 sticks longer than your hand, 4 different nature items, 1 small rock/1 medium rock/1 large rock}.

8. RUN–there is nothing better than telling your kids to just run up and down the yard 15 times.

9. Ball in the Bucket–stand with toes touching a bucket and drop a ball into it. Then take 1 step back and drop the ball in. Then 2 steps back and drop the ball in. See how many steps you can take while still sinking the ball!

10. Mystery–find something in the yard or woods that does not belong {trash, a strange piece of nature, etc.} and come up with a story as to how it got there.

Do you have quick and easy outside games to add?