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A family guide to hosting your own Children’s Olympic Party!

There’s so much more fun to be had than just watching the Olympics on your tv! For families wanting to embrace the sporting spirit and get outdoors – we’ve got great ideas on how to create your own Olympic Games in your back garden!

So, find an open space to play, gather as many teams as you can (a great project if you’re looking after lots of kids or equally as fun just within your own family), get crafty and let the Games begin!

DIY Olympic Torch –

A fun activity to do before the actual Games start (so perfect for a soggy afternoon project), let kids create their own torches. This can be as simple as wrapping decorated craft paper around a torch for a quick fix! We made ours using toilet/paper towel tubes – just paint, rip up some yellow and red tissue paper and attach to the top with sellotape or glue.

Opening Ceremony –

Now it would be difficult to beat the theatrics of Danny Boyle’s spectacular show, but have a go at creating your own ceremony. Especially ideal for creative kids, who might enjoy this more than all the sports! Ideas can include – getting kids to create their own show, with dancing or gymnastics or simply putting on their favourite music, dressing up and parading around the garden with their DIY Olympic flames!

Top tip: Create DIY Flags – you can sneak some school in there by getting kids to paint a handful of flags from different countries – and telling them where they are on the map!

The Games –

Ideal for letting restless kids really stretch their legs, you can create events for all ages and abilities and even adapt some for indoor use if the weather is terrible where you are. Here’s some of our ideas:

Olympic Bean-Bag Throwing – works with just about anything soft and lumpy. See who can throw the bean-bag the furthest!
Obstacle course – Use hula-hoops and garden furniture to create a mini obstacle course. If you’re low on space, have these be silly activities like using chopsticks to put jelly beans in a dish in the fastest time or if you’re indoors use soft cushions and duvets as obstacles.
Races – easy peasy, try three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, egg and spoon races and even just a mums and dads competition!
Long-jump/high jump
Outdoor tournaments – like football, basketball or table tennis.
Hurdles

Closing Ceremony

It’s medals time! While away a rainy afternoon before your Games begin by creating your own medals. There’s loads of ways to do this, from decorating cookies with icing, to moulding medals out of dough and then painting or just cutting out circles of cardboard and using felt-tips to decorate bronze, silver and gold! However you decide to make, just tie your medals up with ribbon and then everyone can be a winner!

The winners: Find some boxes for your children to stand on for the official presentation of the medals, put on their favourite music, hand them a medal (it might be worth making ‘taking part medals’ so that every one gets to win!) and let the kids parade around to really show their pride!

The Olympic Feast:

With a whole day of activities, we’re sure you’ll have worked up quite an appetite. Bring all of the athletes together for a celebratory dinner. If you’ve had children compete as athletes from different countries, this would be a perfect way to introduce food from different cultures and make a dish from each of their honorary countries, served with homemade flag place mats.

Will you be holding your own Olympics Children’s Party? Let us know any ideas you have for fun activities or crafts below!