Fun Playground Games for Kids

An image showing a child swinging on a belt swing seat with a wooden playset in the background.

When kids visit a new playground for the first time, it’s like they are exploring a new world. There are plenty of toys to try, and they can keep themselves entertained for hours. After a few visits, however, parents or playground facilitators might need to inject some creativity to keep the experience fresh. Fun playground games are perfect for this purpose, and we’ve included a few classic ideas below.

Hide and Seek

This is a game that is perfectly suited for the playground. There are almost certainly going to be plenty of great hiding places throughout the playground, and this is a game that kids of a variety of ages can play together. As an adult supervising the play session, you’ll want to make sure that no kids are wandering off to hide in dangerous places.

Treasure Hunt

For this game, you will need to put in a little bit of work ahead of your trip to the playground. Collect a few small (and inexpensive) items that you can use as ‘treasures’ and place them around the playground in various hidden spots (while the kids aren’t looking, of course). Give the kids a list of what they are trying to find and turn them loose to start searching. This is a good game to build teamwork as you could tell the kids they are all working together to accomplish the goal.

Create a Course

If you have kids who love to challenge themselves physically on the playground, chart out a course for them to work through and consider using a timer to keep track of their best runs. For instance, you might ask them to swing across the monkey bars, go up a climbing wall, down the slide, and run to a finish line.

You can customize your course based on the playground equipment available and the age and ability of the children. If you time the kids as they run through the course, write down their best times at the end of the day, so they can try to beat those times on their next visit.

Tag

As with hide and seek, this is another classic game that has been played for years in various forms. Your kids may choose to play classic tag, where one person is “It,” and they try to tag someone else as the kids all run around the playground. Or try a variation, like Zombie Tag, where each person who is tagged also becomes “It”—until only one player remains.

Final Thoughts

Playgrounds are meant for fun, and these games should help kids get even more enjoyment out of their experience. One of the great things about teaching kids to play games like these is the way many kids will let their imaginations run to create new rules and other ways to play. Once you get them started, who knows where it will go!

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