Easy/cheap games for Pre-K kids

[adventure_woman]

I am in charge of creating the 'carnival' for the pre-k kids this year. There will be 14+ kids that we need to create little games/stations for. Anyone have any good ideas? We have thought of: face painting, tattoos, ball toss, gator golf, make a necklace, basketball toss. Possibly water balloon toss or hard-boiled egg on a spoon relay.

Any other ideas? They can be things kids do individually or together as a pair/etc. AND, would prefer it be something you don't have to go out and buy a whole bunch of stuff for!

 

[cyndik1111]

here is one that is always a big hit.

Buy a box of those tiny donuts with the holes in the middle (the chocolate work best, avoid powered-too messy) then loop a string through the middle hole and hang from a stick (or what ever)
then have the kids try and eat them with no hands. OMG- my daughter's class loved this!

Hot potato is always fun- use music- when the music stops- whoever is holding the "potato" is out. Keep going till only one is left. Use a stuffed animal for the potato so no one gets hurt.

 

[zoemurr]

I'll try to remember..

We had bean bag frogs that we catapulted onto cardboard lily pads

tic/tac/toe (find a box that has 9 slots for glasses or wine and use that)

staple balloons to a very large box and have darts to throw

fill 4 large bottles with sand and put them on a sawhorse. balance a ping pong ball on each one and have them squirt them off w/water

put cups of water in a kiddie pool and have them throw balls into the cups

attach 4 stuffed animals to a board using hinges. Throw balls at them and they fall over

collect many different kinds of glassware from garage sales and have the kids toss pennies (only on a hard surface.. they all got lost in the grass)

make plinko with a peg board and small dowels

see if anyone has a putting green (I got one for $3 at a garage sale) and see if they can get a hole in one

we also had sand art, tatoos, popcorn and cotton candy. We painted a clown on a refridg. box and cut out the face for fun pictures.

I made everything.. let me know if you need more specifics.

Hope that helps.

 

[Jedana]

We did a carnival for our cub scouts in February. We did a version on the pin the tail on the donkey--I painted 4 different sized frogs and they had to pin the fly to the tongue--and points varied if the frog was little or bigger.

Also, I painted a white sheet to look like "under the sea" (I crumbled the sheet up after I washed it so some creases caught the dark blue and others didn't--made it "wavy"). Added fish, coral, octopui, etc. Then we hung the sheet and made a "fishing pond". Kids tossed fishing line (twine) attached to poles (bamboo tomato stakes) over the sheet and the fish (small prizes, like tattoos, candy, foam airplanes) got caught on the hook (clothespin).

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

3 legged race or a sack race

 

[senoragilbert]

cake walk
ball-in-bucket game (like the old Bozo show!)
Angry Birds (get some of those stuffed ones and make a slingshot out of bungees, some boxes, build a tower with the boxes and let them destroy it!)

 

[MSSANDRA]

If it is hot...and no one minds wet kids...anything water is great. Water balloons, water race relays where they have to run with a cup of water to fill a bucket, water guns with targets.

One fun game we did was duck pick up. Float rubber duckies in a small pool. Have each one marked with a number on the bottom. Numbers match a certain prize the kids get.

Add some lower key things for kids that might need to do their own thing for a little while. Sidewalk chalk, bubbles, hula hoops are fun and easy.

Outside art is fun. Hang huge sheets of paper on a fence or other structure and provide water color in a spray bottle or just paints and a brush!