May 29th

By Mutt Mulligan

Lawn Games for Summer

Summer is the time to get out and enjoy your lawn.  A new book arriving online and in bookstores is “Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games” by Paul Tukey and Victoria Rowell. There are how-to’s for such well-known games as kick the can, flag football and badminton, and games that may be less familiar, such as crab soccer and molkky, a Finnish game where players try to knock down pins.

According to the authors,  “Let kids play on the lawn instead of just looking at the lawn.”

Here is an excerpt from the book (as described in the Chicago Tribune), but you may want to get inspired by checking it out for summer fun.

Follow the Leader

From “Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games” by Paul Tukey and Victoria Rowell:

Premise: “Players follow the actions of the designated leader, no matter how silly.”

Playing area: “Flat surface free of tripping hazards … because players will have their eyes focused on the leader rather than the ground.”

Equipment: Active imagination

Ages: 4 and up

Players: 3 or more

Why play? The game “teaches attention skills and expands horizons for children and creates social breakthroughs and bonds for adults; mostly, however, it just seems to make people laugh,” Tukey and Rowell write.

What to do: “It’s all up to the leader. If he or she flails hands wildly, then everyone else in line follows suit. If the leader squeals like a pig, the rest of the group is obliged to do likewise. …The possibilities are endless.”