Games to Entertain the Kids at a Garden Party

When springtime comes around, it’s only natural to want to get everyone together for a garden party. If you’re not careful, though, it’s easy to make the party all about your kids and exclude your friends who don’t have kids of their own. On the other hand, you can just as easily fall into the trap of having nothing for the kids to do.

Bored kids will soon get restless and start to get in trouble. When they get out of hand, their parents feel the need to take them home. Before you know it, your party has ended before it really had a chance to start. You can avoid either of these problems by setting up a series of fun activities for the kids. This will keep them out of trouble and let the adults enjoy their time together, too.

Here are some classic ideas for games and activities for your kids during your next garden party. If you don’t want to hire a babysitter to keep them organized and focused, you can delegate different parents to help out with each activity. That way, no one is bound to taking care of the kids all day, and everyone gets to have some fun.

Relay Races and Sack Races

Sack races are a real classic. Have the kids line up and step into burlap sacks. If they don’t quite understand how to hop around in their sacks, you and one of the other adults can do a demonstration race. You’ll make them laugh, and then they’ll want to see if they can do as well or better than you did.

A Scavenger Hunt

This will help them work on their reading skills, as well as their reasoning and logic skills. Give the kids lists of objects to find and report back with to a designated adult. If they have trouble reading one of the items, they can ask you or one of the other adults to help them out. Whoever comes back with a completed list first wins a special prize! Then it’s time to move on to another game.

Red Light, Green Light

This one is guaranteed to keep them busy for a long time. Kids love this classic game. It’ll keep them on their feet and running until they’re all worn out. With this, freeze tag, and other active games, all of the kids will be plenty tired by the time it’s time to go home. Their parents will thank you for wearing them out and giving them a peaceful night’s sleep.

The key to a successful garden party with kids and adults is to make sure that the kids have plenty of room to run around and be kids, but also not to focus so much on them that they become the sole focus of the party. It’s all about balance. Don’t let them overrun the whole party; that way, they’ll learn some boundaries, and everyone will have fun.