Lily Pad Games

Tossing and Lily Pads

• Days with inclement weather provide ideal opportunities for indoor fun with lily pads. A few rounds of lily pad toss offer fun away from the heat or cold. You will need a couple of stuffed frogs, in addition to five cardboard or plastic lily pads (each numbered from 1 to 5), to get the game started. Place the pads throughout a room. Each player attempts to toss her frog on lily pad 1. If successful, she then aims for the second lilly pad, and so on. The first to reach the fifth lily pad wins.

Musical Lily Pads

• Musical chairs is a classic party game that can grow stale with too many repetitions. Inject some fresh greenery into the experience by replacing the chairs with lily pads. Children's parties themed on flora or fauna, like a focus on "The Jungle Book" or "The Princess and The Frog," will appreciate this move. You can purchase a set of 15 musical lily pads from companies like Birthday In a Box. Alternatively, you may make your own pads by hand, using construction paper or cardboard that you cut and paint green.

Learning with Lily Pads

• Lily pad games can be more than just a leaping good time. They also provide an opportunity to educate children as they are being entertained. Caretakers should help children create their own lily pads from green construction paper. This lily pads are then numbered; small children can mark them from 1-9, while more advanced kids can skip to double digits. Arrange them, numbers up, on a sidewalk or durable carpet. Kids can hopscotch on the pads to a number you call out, with instructions like "right hand on number 8" or "big toe on number 17."

Lily Pads and Leapfrog

• Lily pads and playing leapfrog make for a winning combination. Jumping from pad to pad is an excellent way to get kids moving, and help them associate physical activity with happy times. A parent or teacher should cut out a lily pad from one green foam square, creating ten shapes in total. Children should then draw a commonly known shape on each pad, such as a triangle, chair, or boat. A leader -- maybe the teacher, or a game student -- decides a sequence of lily pads to leapfrog, like "triangle-chair-boat" or "boat-triangle-chair."