Kids love to be active and moving all the time.
They also love using their creativity and imagination.
We have a found a great way to combine these into a fun activity for the whole family – Obstacle courses!
An obstacle course can be set up indoors or out. It can be made of elaborate props or simple things found around the house.
I love to let my children run the entire obstacle course event.
They choose the props and activities. They even like to time everyone to see who can make it through the whole course the fastest.
Sometimes they work on an obstacle course together. But other times, they take turns. My son will set up an obstacle course by himself. Once we’ve all completed the course, my daughter will re-arrange everything just the way she wants it and we go through an entirely different course.
I just can’t tell you how much my kids love doing this!
Our most recent obstacle course was indoors because it was late and starting to get dark outside. Here are just a few of the activities my children came up with.
Jump over the imaginary river.
Shoot an alien with the Nerf gun.
Bounce like a ball by jumping on one foot 5 times.
Crawl through the cave.
Some other fun things that we have used in our obstacle courses include:
- Plastic cones to run around
- Hula hoops
- 2×4 piece of lumber from garage for a balance beam
- play a ring toss or bean bag toss game
- sing a song while balancing on one foot
- hurdles to jump over such as a sand box bucket or pool noodles
- tossing balls into a bucket
- jump up and ring a bell
- walk like an monkey for 5 steps
- do a forward roll or jumping jacks
Children have so much fun using their imaginations to design their own obstacle courses but it also a great way to sneak in a little bit of exercise into the day.
Need some inspiration for finding time to exercise for you or your children? Check out these creative Quirky Momma ideas: