By Aldona Bird
Newsroom@DominionPost.com
With COVID-19 cases yet again on the rise and beautiful weather, it’s the perfect time to plan an outdoor game night. With a few fun do-it-yourself projects, you can make some supersized games for super fun.
Corn hole, a popular outdoor game, is fun and easy to DIY. Cut five or more large holes along the center of a piece of cardboard or plywood, make small- to medium-sized sand bags (fill with beans, rice or sand) and prop up the top of the board.
Decorate the sand bags and board with fun colors and mark each hole with the number of points a player will get for tossing a sandbag accurately into it.
A similar game, ring toss, is also easy to make at home. Use dowels, a cut up old wooden broom handle, paper towel cardboard rolls or decorated bottles as goals. Make rings from cardboard, paper plates, glow sticks, stiff rope or anything else circular.
These are terrific, classic outdoor games to have — friends and family will be familiar with them. But it is also fun to have other games your guests won’t be expecting to see outdoors.
One such is dominoes. It’s not traditionally an outdoor game — but with a few materials and tools you can make some whimsical, oversized pieces.
Cut untreated two-by-six boards into foot-long sections. Sand off any splinters. You can opt to paint the whole piece black, another color or leave the wood unpainted.
Mark a line across the center, and circles on either side of the line, as you would see on a regular domino piece. Paint the line and the dots in white, black or a variety of colors.
Kerplunk can also be up-sized with a few materials — wooden rods, ball pit balls and wire fencing. Use chicken wire or other fencing and cut a 40-50 inch length. Roll the fencing so the ends overlap an inch or two and use zip ties or wire to secure them together.
Leave the wooden rods as natural wood or paint them in colors reminiscent of the childhood game. To set up the game, insert the rods through the wire cylinder, crisscrossing at various angles. Dump the balls (100-200 small, lightweight balls) in at the top.
If your wire cage is light, you may need to add tent stakes at the bottom to help it stay upright. Have players carefully remove the rods — count any ball that falls through on a player’s turn against them, and count who dropped the fewest balls at the end.
Try an oversized tic-tac-toe or checkers game, by drawing or painting the playing board onto a stump, large rock or plywood. For versatility, paint plywood with chalkboard paint, so you can draw any game board.
Find smooth rocks and paint them in two colors or designs. Use as Xs and Os, checkers or other game pieces.
Children will have a blast helping create and decorate these games. Once you’ve set up these big games, you’ll be entertaining friends and family the rest of summer and probably into fall as well.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
