Running is one of the best, most fun and exhilarating exercises ever! It is a great way for kids to get their daily 60 minutes of activity. Especially when it is mixed into and packaged as a fun game that children can enjoy at full blast along with their friends!
With that said, here are 15 running games for children that will leave them wanting to run some more.
- Race
- Dodgeball with water balloons
- Seven tiles
- Crocodile, crocodile
- One-legged tag
- Cone race
- Lock and key
- Football
- Relay race
- Chain run
- Lemon and spoon race
- Sack race
- Land or water
- Red rover
- Mr Wolf
The simple, no-holds barred, classic race is a great running game for children. Especially if you live in a society that has a dedicated playground. Or even if you live next to a park for that matter. Just be sure to set up a start and finish line so kids can pick a winner among themselves by checking who got the finish line the fastest!
Probably best played in summer, dodgeball with water balloons is played exactly the way it sounds! You fill up several small balloons with water and then let kids throw them at each other. The key to winning is to dodge as many balloons as possible. We think the driest kid remaining once all the balloons get over should be the winner. What do you think? You can even play this in teams! Whichever team gets all of their players hit with a water balloon first loses.
This running game for children takes things up a notch. So you will need two teams. One of stackers and one of chasers. The stackers will stack up seven tiles (blocks will do to) on top of each other and it will be the job of the chasers to make this tower topple by hitting with a ball.
Once all the blocks have scattered, the stackers must gather them and reconstruct their tower before being hit by a ball coming from the chasers. Because once they are hit, they are out. Whichever team manages to finish their job first wins.
Which colour do you want? Sorry, that is how this running game goes! A bunch of kids pick the crocodile among them through the process of elimination. Now the remaining kids must call out the crocodile and ask which colour they choose. The crocodile after scanning their environment must announce a colour and the remaining kids must run to find an object of that colour. If a kid fails to find an object of that colour and the crocodile tags them, the tagged kid becomes the crocodile and the game repeats!
This is just like your normal tag, only on one leg. Okay, so what the kids have to do is determine chaser among them. They can do this by playing a game of rock, paper, scissors if they like. Now that they have a chaser, they must run about the ground while the chaser tries to tag them by hopping about on one leg. The one who gets tagged first becomes the chaser.
This game requires some serious exercise. It is literally a physical activity for kids!
So you place a bunch of orange plastic cones on the ground in a row with some space between while demarcating a specific start and finish line for the race. Now the kids take their turns, wafting through the cones and flipping them to reach the finish line. Whoever finishes this race the fastest wins. So be sure you have a timer on you to know the real winner.
A school yard game, in lock and key, kids first have to pick a ‘denner’ as they say in desi games. Again, rock, paper, scissors can come in handy. Next, the rest of the players must run around the ground as the denner chases after them to ‘lock’ them. Once locked, that player cannot run anymore till another free player taps them and gives them the ‘key’. The player who has been locked thrice becomes the denner.
Nothing like good old fashioned football to get kids moving! Divide two teams into five players each. Make makeshift goal posts off long pieces of cloth tied to poles. Draw a line in the centre of the ground to demarcate team territory and let the games begin! You can keep each game half an hour long so kids do not get tired.
You know this physical activity for kids is a pretty common part of school sports days. And that is with good reason. Relay races help kids build team camaraderie and coordination. Valuable skills to have.
For this one, you will need a bigger ground. So if you have a park nearby, that is perfect. Just make sure you have start and endpoints and enough kids to have at least two teams of players. And of course a baton which they can pass among themselves.
This is kind of like your average tag with a twist. So once a chaser tags someone, the tagged person has to hold the chaser’s hand and join them in the chasing. Every kid tagged has to join hands and add to the chain till there is only one kid left to chase.
A race that needs no introduction. You take a lemon and put it into the scoop end of the spoon while the stem goes into the player’s mouth. The objective is to reach from the start to the finish line in the shortest time possible without dropping the lemon of the spoon.
As the name says, each player has to get into a sack that they have to hold with both their hands around their waist and then bunny hop to the finish line to win. Whoever comes first, wins!
Land or water is more of an indoors game as you need two surfaces of different heights to play it. Two at the very least. Ground level is a must and then you have couches, benches, chairs, tables etc. So the ground is the water while the higher surfaces are the land. Once the chaser calls ‘land’ all kids have to run to a higher spot. Anyone caught before getting to land becomes the chaser.
You need two teams of at least five kids each. Each team will hold hands to form a chain and then at the blow of a whistle, they will charge at each other! The objective is to break the chain of the other team. The broken link in fact is supposed to abandon their team and join the other team, repeating the whole process till there is only one person left in the other team.
In Mr. Wolf, there is one chaser and everyone else is a runner. So all the runners are supposed to ask the wolf ‘what time is it’. Say if the wolf replies it’s 4 o’clock, the runners are supposed to take four steps towards the wolf. The wolf will keep announcing times when asked till the runners are only one step away from the wolf, at which point the ‘wolf’ will yell lunchtime and the runners will have to scatter before being caught. The one who is caught is now the wolf.
There are many benefits of running for kids. Running can improve their sleep, IQ, stamina, fitness levels and ensure they have some good, clean harmless fun! That is why at EuroKids, we make sure your preschoolers get plenty of run time. We want them to enjoy the many benefits of running for kids! And we also want them to have access to great education while they are at it. Find out how by visiting us!
