Remember all the variations of tag? Put a new face on this old favorite by helping your child learn new ways to play. TV tag is marked by being safe for a few seconds when a player squats down and names a TV show. Variations include “song tag” and “animal tag.” An unusual variation that keeps kids laughing is “Dead Turtle”: to be safe, you must lie on your back and wave your arms and legs in the air! Don't forget freeze tag, shadow tag, and flashlight tag.
Check in your local library for books about old-time games. You'll find lots of forgotten favorites, like “Ghosts in the Graveyard” and “H-O-R-S-E.” These forgotten treasures will likely spark your memory, but they will be brand new to your child.
Need to occupy a child for a longer period of time outdoors? Challenge him or her to use found objects (like sticks and stones) to make furniture! You'll need to provide some string or twine, and possibly show them some options for tying sticks together, then off they go! This one activity can keep a kid interested for hours or even days!
Try a scavenger hunt. Make a list of items that can be found in the children's play area, then let them go with a collection sack. The things to find can range from sticks, stones, flowers, and leaves to feathers, shells, fossils, or evidence that people were there before them. For a cool variant on this game, arm your child with a camera (digitals or disposables work well), and send them out to snap pictures of items on the list, like a number, a letter, a box, something taller than six feet, or something round. You can vary the list's difficulty according to your child's age and how much time you want to fill.
If your child is looking for a quieter pursuit, try this variation on leaf collecting. Instead of trying to preserve the leaf itself, place the leaf (vein-side up) under a piece of thin paper. Color on the paper to make a print of the leaf. Be sure to color all the way to the edges of the leaf to get the outside shape as well as the pattern of the veins. Maybe leaves collected in this way could be taken to the library to match with pictures in a reference book for identification.
And finally, here's a night-time favorite. You'll need a set of keys or other noisy item, a flashlight, and a blindfold. Seat the blindfolded child in the center of the group with the keys behind him or her. Other players try to sneak up and take the keys without being heard. If the blindfolded child hears a noise, he or she tries to shine the light on the sneaky thief. If the light hits the other player, he or she is caught and the player in the center gets another turn. A successful thief gets to be in the middle for the next turn.
