Obstacle Course Fun for Kids

Each month I’ll be bringing you a fun children’s activity from Freaky Rivet’s co- founder, Iyas. I can’t wait to try this month’s activity with my daughter! You can learn more about Iyas and my affiliate partner Freaky Rivet at the bottom of this post.

If your child harbours aspirations of stealing the crown jewels, then you’d want them to do it in style. Not that Julia or the guys at Freaky Rivet condone illegal heists of jewellery or anything else, BUT, why do anything without style that you could do with this kind of class? Bring together Capoeira, dance, laser beams and a cool soundtrack, and you’d have something like this.

We don’t have laser beams or diamonds worthy of the name in our house, so we created our own version using party streamer paper and chocolate instead. Nothing if not glamorous! Aside from the party streamer paper, we also used a corridor and some masking tape. If you want to up the ante, get a timer (probably on your phone), and maybe even set a video camera at the end of the run (probably also on your phone). Finally, see if you can keep yourself from trying this yourself – we couldn’t.

Setup is easy. Use a corridor, or somewhere with walls that are relatively close together. Create the laser beams by sticking streamer paper from the wall on one side to the wall on the other. Not too close together, or it would be impossible. Have some ‘beams’ high, others low, and others going from high to low. Make it so that your child will have to bend, flex, balance, jump, crawl or slither to make it from one end to the other.

Once the course is set, the goal is for your child to go from one end of the course to the other without breaking the streamer paper. Set a timer for 2 minutes, or if that gets too easy, make it 90 seconds. Have the ‘diamond’ on a chair at the end of the course, and set the video camera up there pointing back through the course to capture them going from end to end. The main rule is that they can’t touch or lean on the walls.

Once they’ve mastered it, you can make it more challenging. Have them redesign the course so that they would need to go from low to high one obstacle to the next, and get the ‘laser beams’ closer together.

AND – let us know if you managed to have them do this without you having a go at it as well!

Freaky Rivet was founded by Iyas, the author of this article and father of four, and Kevin, an ex-teacher of over a thousand children, who now runs activity days for schools. Iyas used to lead an organisation of nearly 500 people, which he left for the bigger challenge of herding his four children with his wife around Latin America for 6 months. During this life-changing trip to recover from the corporate world, he was disturbed to see how easily children’s natural curiosity, discovery and energy could be side-tracked when a video game was in the vicinity. Deciding that technology was still essential for our children, but that it shouldn’t be given free reign instead of kids exploring, moving and creating, he decided with Kevin, an old friend from their time together at Oxford University, to come up with the Freaky Rivet concept – inviting children into a life of activity, of exploration and of discovery by using technology rather than fighting it. In his spare time (kidding, right?) he runs a charity for children living in disadvantaged and war-torn environments.

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