Hobbies And Interests
Scavenger Hunt
Stimulate kids' imaginations and help develop their sense of fantasy by hosting a scavenger hunt throughout the playground. Create homemade maps that show kids a route through the playground, with a variety of clues sprinkled around the map. This will help kids to view their playground with new eyes and stimulate their deductive and logical reasoning skills. The scavenger hunt should also be a good workout and get kids running, climbing, digging and crawling. As an added activity, have kids form teams, with each team drafting a map for the opposing team.
Map of America
Draw an enormous map of America on the ground of the play area. Make each state several yards long. Divide students into several groups and have each group responsible for a state. Each group has to draw distinguishing features about each state, such as national parks within the state boundaries, features of major cities such as the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, major rivers, lakes and mountain ranges, and cities where instrumental Americans were born. The group that does the most thorough and inventive work wins the game.
State Capitals
This game is appropriate for a school playground that has a huge map of the U.S. painted on the ground. Assemble a group of kids, with one child being the leader of the game. The leader has to shout out the name of a state capital, but not the state that it's in. All the kids, upon hearing that city name, have to run to that state. Any kids who run to the wrong state are out of the game.