Backyard Obstacle Course

Are you and your kids ready to splash, run, crawl, jump and shoot? In honor of Backyard Games Week we decided to create an obstacle course at our HQs that you can recreate in your own backyard. This obstacle course is perfect for Memorial Day Weekend because it will keep toddlers and preschoolers busy during barbecues. All you need is seven materials and you’ll be done in six easy steps, so let’s get started.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Water Table
• Duct Tape
• Number stickers or colored tape
• Chalk
• Pool Noodles
• Crafting Cattails (or chopsticks)
• Scissors
• Basketball Hoop
• Kid’s basketball

1. Write “START” in chalk near your child’s water table.
2. Place number stickers on the bottom of the water toys that are floating around in the activity table. When your toddlers pick up one of the water toys, ask them to flip it over to find a number. This number will be used at the end of the obstacle course. For this part of the activity, we made the numbers out of colored tape and put them on the bottom of rubber ducks.
3. Create arrows to lead preschoolers and toddlers to the different parts of the obstacle course. We taped duct tape to the grass to create the arrows (this step is optional).
4. Push two cattails or chopsticks into the ground parallel to one another 30 to 40 inches apart. Bend the pool noodles slightly and slide each side onto the sticks. Repeat this step until you have a noodle tunnel for kids to crawl through.
5. With your leftover noodles, make a “ladder” to lie on the ground. Cut a pool noodle into three parts to create the bars and tape them to two longer parallel noodles. Kids can crawl the ladder after exiting the tunnel or they can get up and jump over the bars of the ladder like a game of hopscotch.
6. Write “FINISH” near the basketball hoop. Remember the toy from the water table with the number on the bottom? Whichever number was on the toy is how many baskets little sports lovers should to try to make to finish the obstacle course.

This backyard adventure encourages kids to spend time outside and benefits their minds and bodies. We hope you and your family have just as much fun creating this activity as you will have playing with it.

Have you ever created a backyard obstacle course? If so, we would love to hear your ideas and stories!

Manufacturer’s Note: Please make sure children are the recommended age to play with the products featured in this blog post. Adult supervision is required.