Kid Creativity: Bounce Back Game Time.

Sometimes a new game will spring up when we least expect it. I love it when my kids come up with something entirely on their own; I'm always happy to help point them down the pioneering path.

Since it was blazing hot by 9 a.m. on Saturday, our only outdoor option was to pull out the tiny inflatable baby pool and splash around.  After a while my 6-year-old got bored with the little pool and started looking for another outdoor option.  


We have two boys in our house, so we are constantly bouncing with bouncy balls. There are balls in every shape and size, from the least bouncy to the bounciest.  I don't mind a bouncy ball one bit.  I will take 10 totes full of bouncy balls over 1 harmonica or drum any day.


My boys have been on a ball kick lately and it is something that they enjoy playing together--even with their four year age gap, so that's nice.  Since we have an endless supply of bouncing balls around the house, I let them bring a few outside and bounce them around. Eventually the bouncing balls found their way into the baby pool--large target. Then we started hunting for smaller and smaller targets: buckets, totes, cans.  I finally remembered my awesome stash of yogurt containers that I had in the pantry.  I have been saving them because they are just too great to throw away (*cough hoarder *cough) and yesterday we finally put them to use.

Once we set the yogurt containers around the baby pool, we circled them with chalk and put various numbers to represent points at each spot, depending on how difficult we thought each shot would be.  Next, we drew a line for him to stand behind while throwing the bouncy balls and he drew a scoreboard for each player.  

Once the game was all set up (which was really the fun part anyway) it was time to play.  Griffin had fun bouncing the ball and attempting to steer the bounciness into the small yogurt containers.  It was a challenging game and he was very excited even if the ball simply touched the container.  Of course he also had to keep moving farther back.

Games are everywhere.  If you encourage your kids to run with their own creativity, you'll be surprised how far they go with it.  The yogurt/pool/bouncy game might not make it onto the shelves of Toys-R-Us anytime soon, but I had a great time creating something from nothing with my boys.  What is a fun game that your family created or modified lately?