Five Awesome Wide Games to Play With Campers and Students

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

- Plato

Playing wide games is such a fun part of summer camp and school. Since I just returned from volunteering at a summer camp in BC, I thought I'd share a few favourites. Hopefully you can use some of these to build community with your classes when we go back to school in a few weeks! 

Four Way Flag Tag

This is a super fun wide game that we played with all four grade seven classes on the first day of school. It is a great way to burn off energy and gives students a chance to work together as a group. You can play with any number of kids. Just make sure you cut up enough flag tape pieces ahead of time!

Materials

- Flag tape (one colour is fine - cut the tape into 30cm pieces - if we have 100 players, I pre-cut 150 pieces)

- Scissors

- Clipboard

- Bucket for flag tape

- Pencil/pen

- Tally sheet with team names

- Poster board with team names and who they are chasing

- Coloured paint (one colour for each team)

- Cones to set up two circles (one safe zone to turn in flag tape, one safe zone to receive a new piece of flag tape)

Instructions

1. Split your group of campers/students into four teams and assign them a colour. 

2. Have each team use their paint colour to add some war paint to their faces. It is best to use non-toxic paint for this. If you have face paint, that is excellent! 

3. Give each player a piece of flag tape to tuck into the side of their shorts/pants. The flag tape needs to hang out so it is easily seen and steal-able.

4. Explain that each of the four colours will be chasing one other colour and be chased by another colour. 

Example: 

Red chases Green

Green chases Blue

Blue chases Yellow

Yellow chases Red

4. To successfully earn a point for your team, a player must steal a piece of flag tape from the team they are chasing. Ex. Red must steal a piece of flag tape from a Green player. The Red player must then run with their stolen flag tape to a person standing in a safe zone holding a clipboard. The Red player tells the scorekeeper what team they are on, drops the flag tape in a bucket, and then runs off to catch more Green players. 

5. If a player has their flag tape stolen, they must go to the safe zone without the scorekeeper to receive a new piece of flag tape. The person manning this circle should make players do something like sing a song, build a human pyramid, perform 50 jumping jackets, etc. to receive their new flag tape.

6. A player does not need to run back to the safe zone after each flag they steal. They could keep up to 10 in their pocket at any time. If someone steals their flag though, they must give all flags that they have stolen to that person. 

Helpful Tips: 

- Keep the two safe zones on opposite sides of a field to stretch out the running area. 

- Have one adult walk back and fourth between the two safe zones to replenish the adult with flag tape that has been turned in. This way you can recycle the flag tape and not have to cut up hundreds of pieces. 

Hunter, Ninja, Bear

This game is a life sized version of Rock, Paper, Scissors and is hilarious to watch. 

Materials

- Whistle

- Open field 

- Cones (to mark the centre of the field and a safe zone on either end that is equal distance from the centre)

Instructions

1. Split up campers/students into two teams

2. Let them know who beats who and come up with actions for each. 

Hunter beats Bear

Bear beats Ninja

Ninja beats Hunter

Possible Actions: 

Hunter: Shooting a Bow and Arrow

Bear: Arms in the air, they could roar 

Ninja: Knees bent, look like they are swinging nunchucks

*They will definitely forget these for a few rounds and it causes hilarious chaos. 

3. Groups will meet together in their safe zone and decide what they will be. They need to be sneaky and obviously not yell their actual decisions. 

4. Once teams are ready (give them 20 seconds), they come to the center line and stand back to back with the other team. 

5. Teacher/leader counts to three, both teams turn to face each other and strike their poses. 

6. Campers/students need to interpret the other team's pose, decide if it is a threat to them, and if it is they must run to their safe zone without being tagged by the other team. If they are tagged, they join the other team. 

7. Keep playing until all the players from one team have been caught by the other. 

Hidden Gems

This game is a really fun one to play at camp! You could play it at school, but you would need a bunch of extra staff to be guarding the coloured gems and running around chasing students with water guns or flour filled nylons. 

Materials

- Four bags of pasta spray painted different four different colours

- 8 large buckets (four with pasta hidden in different areas, four empty and together with scorekeepers in a safe zone)

- Clipboard and tally sheet

- Water guns or flour filled nylons

- Cones to show the safe zone

Instructions

1. Hide the four buckets of pasta in different places - each bucket has a different colour. Make sure there is an adult watching each bucket. 

2. Tell players that they are collecting items for points. Each item is worth 10 points and if you have four colours at the same time you get 50 points. 

3. Players can only hand one of each colour in at a time. This helps keep them from camping out at one colour, taking a ton, and coming back to the scorekeeper.

4. Players need to watch out for the "bad guys" as they are going from the hidden bucket to the scorekeepers. If they get hit by a water gun or a nylon filled with flour, they must hand over all their gems to the "bad guys" and start again. 

Players can play in teams, as individuals, or as cabins. Set up your tally sheet to reflect how you're playing. The game continues until you want it to end. 

Mystery Mansion

This game is super fun to play as a night game. You can play it basically anywhere but just make sure to give clear boundaries and remind students to walk if they are going through forests and climbing over logs.

You will need a few key helpers to help make this game work. 

1. Glow Stick Runner: This person has all the glow sticks and runs around secretly, hides in places, and drops glow sticks all over for students to find. 

2. Ticket Exchanger: This person has a roll of tickets and exchanges glow sticks for tickets and then gives the glow sticks back to the glow stick runner to be re-used. 

3. Mystery Mansion Bouncer: This person sets up the mystery mansion. They place a tarp over some logs, rocks, or picnic tables to create a little room. Inside the room they lay out 15 random objects and one poem. Players will give the bouncer one ticket for 15 seconds in the mystery mansion. They need to try and memorize as many of the items as they can before their time is up. 

4. Team List Guards: You will want one student from each class/team to sit with their team's piece of paper. Once a student comes out of the mystery mansion, they will run to their list and add new items to it. As a team, they will need to write out the entire poem. 

5. Roaming Protectors: It is a good idea to have some parents/teachers roaming around the boundaries to make sure the game is being played fair. 

Materials

- 60 glow sticks (Michaels has packs of 15 for $1.50)

- One roll of tickets from the dollar store

- About 15 random objects and a poem 

- One large tarp or a couple small ones

- Paper and pencil (one for each team to keep track of what they see in the mystery mansion)

Instructions

1. Split your group into teams - we played class vs. class and had four teams.

2. Tell students that they need to search the area for glow sticks. Once they find a glow stick, they need to find the ticket exchanger and exchange the glow stick for at ticket. 

3. Once they have a ticket they need to find the mystery mansion and exchange their ticket for 15 seconds inside the mystery mansion memorizing everything they can. 

4. Once they are out of the mystery mansion, they need to find their team rep and write down as many items as they can remember from inside the mansion. They then repeat the entire process. 

The class that gets the most items wins the game. 

Save the Rubber Duck

This is probably my most favourite night game to play while camping with students at Alice Lake Provincial Park in Squamish, BC. It needs a lot of extra adult support, so don't attempt this without at least 15 -20 adults to help. You will need one special adult to be the doctor - this person will add food colouring to plastic water cups. You will need ten adults to run around wielding flour filled socks or waterguns. 

Materials

- Bag of flour and five pairs of socks, or ten waterguns

- Enough plastic water cups for all students

- Food colouring

- Water fountain (to be manned by a teacher)

- One bucket for each team

- One rubber duck inside the bucket of each team

Instructions

1. Split students into teams and give each of them one plastic cup. Let them know that this is the only cup they will receive and that they must return it at the end of the game or their class is automatically disqualified. *This helps make sure no cups are left in nature.

2. Tell students that their task is to travel to the water fountain to have their water cup filled by a teacher. They must then find the doctor who will add food colouring to their water. Once they have coloured water in their cup they must run to their class bucket and put the water in the bucket to make the rubber duck float. The class with the most water in the bucket at the end of the game wins. 

3. Inform students that water must stay in the plastic cup. They cannot put the water in their mouth and then spit it back out once they get to the bucket. 

4. Warn students that there will be parents roaming through the boundaries with flour filled socks. If parents lightly tap a student with a flour filled sock, the student must dump out their water and start again. If you don't like the idea of flour filled socks gently tapping students, perhaps use water guns instead. 

This game can be played for as long as you like. It is best to use a large area because there is a lot of running. 

Hopefully you have found some fun games to use with campers or students! If you want to be alerted next time I post something, click the menu button and subscribe on the left side of my page. Thanks for reading!