With the arrival of summer and the end of the school year, children have an abundance of time to spend outdoors playing with family and friends.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at some of the most fun all-against-all and team water games to be played in the garden or at the beach, enabling your kids to have fun and make new friends during the summer holidays.
Capture the flag… with water bombs
Capture the flag is a traditional outdoor game:
- organise the kids into two teams and assign every child a number;
- each child will be handed a class of water (our hot-day variant);
- position the flag waver (usually an adult), who will shout out the chosen number, in between the two teams;
- the players whose number has been called must then run towards the flag;
- the first child to reach the flag has to throw the glass full of water over their rival;
- the losing team is the team that is the most drenched come the end of the game.
Hot or cold
This is a group game, to be played outdoors, with all the players sat in a circle except for one who, outside of the circle and with a glass of water in hand, will one-by-one place their hand on the heads of the other children and say the words hot or cold; on saying the word cold, the glass of water will be thrown over the player to invite the challenge and both children will then run in opposite directions around the circle, with the aim of taking or returning to the spot left empty by the rival player. Whoever manages to sit down first is the winner and the child left standing will have to choose another rival to challenge.
Fill the bucket
All you need to play fill the bucket are two children who, one sat in front of the other, will compete to see who will be the first to fill a container, positioned close to the feet of each child, to the brim.
Beach Volleyball and Beach Soccer: ‘smash on seven’ version
There are countless ball games to be played on the beach, with volleyball and soccer proving the most popular, followed by beach tennis. When played in water, these two games can be extremely fun and refreshing. For both beach volleyball and beach soccer, we are proposing the ‘smash on seven’ version, in which the children involved, after the seventh consecutive pass of the ball, have to smash or kick the ball on the volley, according to the game being played, with the aim of hitting another child and knocking them out of the game. If the latter, however, blocks the ball or manages to avoid it by diving under water, the hitter or kicker is out of the game.
