With the sun beaming down and the temperatures climbing up, summertime is a great way to spend time with people you love and care about. Here are some fun outdoor summer games to play in your backyard.

Scavenger Hunt

As the weather warms up, getting outside is one of the best ways to enjoy what nature offers while making memories with friends and loved ones. If there’s one way for everyone of all ages to have a good time, hosting a scavenger hunt is it. It’s a fun, inclusive way to get everyone’s puzzle-solving skills revving to figure out clues on where each item resides.

You can make your scavenger hunt simple by encouraging guests to find run-of-the-mill items, completing their quest, or base the hunt on a theme, such as colors, characters, pop culture, history, and so much more. Take your time coming up with fun yet challenging riddles to get everyone excited for a memorable time.

Water Games

Do you and your loved ones want to beat the heat? One guaranteed fun outdoor summer game to play in your backyard is to play fun water activities. If you have a swimming pool to fit every guest, there are dozens of games you can play to get everyone excited. Some games include diving games, water sports, races, and many more.

However, if you don’t have a swimming pool, you can purchase multiple wading pools for little guests to splash around in and enjoy themselves. Otherwise, sprinklers, slip ‘n’ slides, water balloon fights, squirt gun matches, and more can help everyone beat the heat for hours of fun.

Cornhole Games

Everyone loves a little friendly competition. If there’s one summer backyard game staple at every barbeque, birthday party, graduation, and more, it’s cornhole. It’s a simple game involving small bags filled with beans or corn tossed at a wooden incline platform with a hole at the top. It’s a simple, quick game that involves two teams trying to accumulate the highest point each round.

You can play one-on-one or with teams or two, involving alternative turns tossing four bags onto the opponent’s board. Every bag that lands on the board earns a point, and bags being thrown or pushed into the hole earn three points. The first team to reach 21 points wins the match. It’s a fun, friendly game where you can keep things simple or add fun challenges to make it more involved. It’s a perfect summer staple for any party.

Ladder Toss

If you like the concept of cornhole but want to challenge yourself a bit more, ladder toss is the perfect alternative. It involves two teams trying to rack up the most points. Each team has two plastic pipe ladders and pieces of rope with plastic balls attached to either side. Their goal is to toss the rope ball in such a way that it catches onto one of the ladder rungs from a distance.

Each of the three ladder rungs has differing points; the top rung is three points, the middle rung is two, and the bottom rung is one. The first team to reach 21 points wins the game. Another popular variation is the top rung is one point, the bottom rung two points, and the middle rung three points for an additional challenge. It’s a fun game that can create hours of friendly competition.

Jump Rope & Hopscotch

If your backyard area consists of asphalt or gravel, a tried-and-true backyard summer activity for kids is jump roping and hopscotch games. Children can play many variations of hopscotch involving numbers, letters, shapes, and more to make the game more challenging and involved. Jump rope can involve a single player or multiple people, such as double-dutch, with a person on each side holding two long jump ropes and kids moving through.

Giant Jenga

Jenga is a fun way to use gravity to your advantage. If you know a couple of Jenga enthusiasts and want to take it to the next level, giant Jenga is a fun summer backyard activity. You don’t need athletic skills, just the power of smarts and luck.

You can have a game of two or twenty people, consisting of block-stacking, tumbling, and balancing, for a nostalgic, entertaining game that everyone will love. It’s also a great icebreaker for guests who don’t know each other, bringing out the friendly competition in everyone.

Badminton

If you want a more involved outdoor game, badminton is a fun, casual outdoor activity you can easily host in your backyard. It reminds many players of volleyball but uses badminton racquets to hit the shuttlecock back and forth over a net. Whoever makes the shuttlecock land in the other team’s half of the court wins points, and whichever team reaches 21 points wins.

Badminton has a long entertainment history and makes for hours of fun for guests. Badminton can also involve “singles” with one player per side or “doubles” involving two players per side. It’s a perfect game to play in your grassy or sandy backyard.

Lawn Bowling

A fun summer game for all ages is the tried-and-true sport of bowling. It involves ten bowling pins set up at the end of the lawn, with the goal being to knock as many pins down as possible. You can play with two to four people at a time, where each player throws a bowling ball down the lawn to knock over pins and score points.

The goal is to reach the highest score possible, 300 points. You can also score spares, where you knock down all the pins in two turns, or strike, where you knock down all the pins in one turn. It’s a competitive game of skill where everyone tries their best to knock down as many pins as possible to win.

Tug-of-War

One game that everyone can participate in is tug-of-war, where two teams at either end of a rope pull to see which team is the strongest. It’s especially fun when multiple people are on each team trying to prove their strengths. With an enthusiastic audience and energetic music, it’s a fun game involving everyone at the party.

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