Family Summer Olympics are an annual family tradition and an excuse to spend some fun quality time with loved ones. Adults and kids competitive spirit is put to it’s test with a variety of backyard games and competitions, including water balloon relays, jumbo beer pong, slosh ball, wheelbarrow races and so much more!
Life Lately | Family Summer Olympics 2016
A couple of weeks ago our family gathered for the third annual Family Summer Olympics. My immediate family along with my aunt, uncle and their children, who used to live on the same farmstead as us when we were younger, gather together to kick each others butts in a variety of goofy, crazy and wet backyard games! Everyone comes decked out in their team colors ready to compete.
For the last two years Red Team has been victorious…and won’t stop bragging about it all year long. This year my Blue Team was determined to steal the title. We gained a new player on Blue Team due to a recent engagement of my cousin, which helped us take the win for the first time!
Water Balloon Pop
Water Balloon PopFirst up on the docket was what I like to call Water Balloon Pop. For this game, I tie about 40 water balloons onto the clothes line and nearby tree in two different colors. The object of the game is for members of each team to take turns being blindfolded wearing a hat with a fork attached. They are verbally guided by one of their teammates to their team’s color balloon and they need to pop the balloon without touching it. This continues on relay style until the first team has popped all their balloons. Needless to say when I popped my balloon, I got soaking wet!
Winner – BLUE TEAM
Water Balloon Relay
Water Balloon RelayNext up was a water balloon relay. I bought some of these water balloons so I could fill hundreds of balloons in a matter of minutes. WORTH EVERY PENNEY! In years past, my sister and I would sit outside for HOURS filling water balloons. While they might be a bit more expensive, I would much rather pay the extra amount to save so much time.
For the relay I added a couple fun obstacles this year. At one point, the team had to toss their balloons onto a towel two people were holding and then those people had to toss the balloon to the next person swinging the towel. At the end, two people were sitting on chairs holding small baskets over their heads and the winning team got the most balloons in the baskets. After all the balloons were counted up and a winner was determined, we went to town with a good old fashioned water balloon fight!
Winner – RED TEAM
Slimy Spelling
Slimy SpellingThis Slimy Spelling was inspired by Big Brother’s Otev game. The day before the competition I set up three disgusting buckets of nastiness. The first bucket I added mud and weeds from the garden. The second bucket was full of oatmeal, expired soup and vegetable oil. The third bucket was plump full of fallen apples from my tree that I chopped up and added sugar to. I let all three buckets stew over night in the 90 degree heat and they were completely disgusting. Flies were swarming the apples and the oatmeal smelled like vomit.
The morning of the competition, I added a bunch of plastic poker chips that each had a letter and number value on them to the buckets. The object of the game was for the teams to line up and relay back and forth to the buckets picking out one letter at a time. I was worried some people would refuse to participate, so I implemented a point penalty at the beginning of the game for each player who didn’t dig in the buckets.
Luckily no one was willing to forfeit the points, so everyone participated. The game lasted for 10 minutes and the team who could spell the word worth the most points won. Blue team had a word worth twice as much as red teams…but apparently we can’t spell and Google made us loose it. BOOO! I’m pretty sure no one on blue team will ever forget that Calligraphy is spelt with two L’s though. :/
Winner – RED TEAM
Pantyhose Bowling
Pantyhose BowlingThis was a quick and easy game where you place a softball in a pair of pantyhose and team members wrap it around their forehead. Players have to make their way down the line knocking over water bottles with the softball.
Winner – BLUE TEAM
Tipsy Waiter
Tipsy WaiterThis game was a last minute addition that we found circulating on Facebook. One by one, players would have to spin around on a bat 8 times and then pick up a tray of water glasses. They would have to make their way to the other side of the lawn and fill a bucket with the water. The first team to fill their bucket won.
This game made for some of the most laughs at our Family Summer Olympics and was absolutely hysterical. From my uncle falling down flat after spinning to my dad wobbling around like a complete drunk, it made for great Snapchat videos! 😉
Winner – BLUE TEAM
Wheelbarrow Races
Wheelbarrow RacesEach year I am sure to incorporate the wheelbarrows into a game at Family Summer Olympics and they usually involve a blindfold. In the past I have had the driver be blindfolded, but that was just plain dangerous and we were lucky no one got hurt! This year I set up a course with some of these large cones with softballs on top.
It was relay style and each team started with one blindfolded person sitting in the wheelbarrow and one driver. They had to weave through the cones grabbing the softballs off and the next two players made their way back having to put the balls back on. This process was repeated two times each, so eight players from each team participated.
If the players knocked the balls off the cones when they were picking them up, the driver would have to run back and collect all the dropped balls before the next pair could go. Teams quickly realized it was more efficient to just knock them off and run back and pick them up, rather than taking the time to carefully pick them off.
Winner – BLUE TEAM
Jumbo Beer Pong
Jumbo Beer PongUnless you have been living under a rock, you probably know what beer pong is. If you don’t, go ahead and google it. We supersized this game using large black buckets and some dodge balls. This is one of the family’s favorite games that we repeated from last year’s Family Summer Olympics.
Winner – RED TEAM
Slosh Ball
Slosh BallLast, but certainly not least was Slosh Ball. This is the game we end our Family Summer Olympics with each year and it is a blast! It is a good old fashioned game of wiffle ball, but at second base you have to either chug half a beer or spin around on a bat 10 times. Because this can take some time, as many players are allowed to congregate at second base as you want. There is no force at third. From third base to home, you have to slide in on the slip and slide.
The score was close enough going into Slosh ball that this game would determine the victors. I’m not quite sure why, but the game was low scoring this year and even went into extra innings. In the end blue team pulled out the victory and was finally named the champions of Family Summer Olympics. WOOHOO!
Winner – BLUE TEAM
Bliss says
Every year I look around the web for family games, be it for Christmas, just kids, or family. It seems there are a lot of the same kinds….. till I found yours. The slimy game takes the cake in unique! Thank you for sharing and for understandable directions.
Sally says
I’m a few years late to the party here, but I love all of these ideas so much! I think I’ll borrow a few for our summer family get together. We’re always doing fun, weird, and crazy games. Perfect with the Summer Olympics coming up! Fellow Minnesotan here too. 🙂 Do you think the large buckets are 17 gallon? I found some on Amazon, but I just can’t picture that size in my head. There’s an 8 pack for about $8 a piece, so I was thinking that could be right. Thank you!
Danielle Green says
Yes, ours were 17 gallon! Hope you have nice weather for your get-together in this crazy MN weather right now.
Kylee says
Hi Danielle! It’s quite a few years since your original post but I love all these ideas! I want to do Family Olympics for our family reunion but how do you incorporate little kids into the games? From the photos it seems like a lot of the games will be so fun for adults, but how do you keep the little ones entertained so that the adults can enjoy the game without having to “dub” it down for them?
Danielle Green says
That’s a great question Kylee! We now have 10 young kids and are facing this challenge ourselves. We included some of the 5+ year olds in the Cheeto Head game as well as the water balloon relay. Apart from that, most games don’t require every single person to participate, so the people not playing will supervise the kids in the kiddie pool. The older ones tend to run off and play well on their own as well while we ignore them. ?
Vivian Bannon says
I know how to play beer pong but not sure about the beer pong with the buckets and dodge balls. how many players per team and how does it work. Can you give me some details.
Danielle Green says
So you follow the same rules as beer pong, but you can have as many players on a team as you want. We just went through a rotation taking turns throwing. If a ball bounced off a bucket you could swat it away. You also need to pull the bucket if a ball lands in it right away so they don’t get two balls in it, just like regular beer pong.
Sachkia says
This site was freaking awesome. I loved all your games. I am planning my families for June and definitely will incorporate some of these. Thank you so much for sharing!
Danielle Green says
Hope you enjoy them with your family!
Sachkia Hamilton says
Hi Danielle may I ask about the tic tac-toe-race. Was that one hardtop implement? I don’t see a mention of it or was it just as fun as the others.
Danielle Green says
It was easy to implement, but for some reason it was a dud. My family is quite smart for the most part, but for some reason they just didn’t pick up the concept well and it wasn’t much of a competition. Maybe it would work better with children who listen better? lol
Trish Franciosi says
Hi Danielle, I know this a little after your post but, I LOVE your games am going to try to use a bunch in some of my Fitness Olympics this year.
Am wondering where you were able to purchase your tubs for the Beer Pong? Was trying not to have to buy 20 of them for about $5/each were you able to find them cheaper?
Thanks for taking the time to post this
Danielle Green says
I got mine at Walmart and I think I paid around $8 each when buying them in a multi-pack. They do add up, but I have been able to use them for lots of other things around the house and subsequent games in this year’s olympics.
Deb says
What do you mean spinning around on a bat? Do they stand on it?
Danielle Green says
You stand on the ground with a bat on the ground and place your forehead on the bat. You then rotate (run around) the bat so many times.
Norine Borys says
This is an awesome collection of activities that include all ages and abilities!! I’m interested in your slimy spelling game. Did you write the letters and numbers with sharpies? No worries about the ink running or coming off? How many letters per bucket and how did you decide which letters and what their values should be? Hope you see this and have a chance to respond. I’m planning the games challenge portion of our family reunion in a couple of weeks and would love to include this game! Thanks in advance!
Danielle Green says
Hi Norine! I did use sharpie markers on the poker chips and they didn’t wear off. I was sure to add the chips to the bucket right before we started playing though so this would be less of an issue.
To decide the values of the letters, I based it off of the frequency they are used in the English language. So I referenced a chart like this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency and assigned higher values to less frequent letters and lower values to more common letters. There was no particular formula, but I used values 1 to 5 and each individual letter always had the same value. I included about 5-6 of each letter and then added a few more of the most common letters and vowels.
As for distributing letters between buckets, it was completely random. I just had my bag of chips and tossed about equal amounts in each bucket.
I hope you enjoy the game at your family reunion. It was a blast for us and got very competitive! 🙂
Deena McCollum says
What a fun game…I am somewhat challenged in the game execution area!! LOL. Did the team members just keep going to the bucket and picking letters for the whole 10 minute time frame to try to get more letters to work with? At the end of 10 minutes, they had to have their word arranged?
Thanks!
Danielle Green says
Yes, the teams could continue to go to the bucket one at a time and pick letters the entire 10 minutes, but when the time was up they had to have their word completely spelled out and hands in the air! 🙂
Linnie says
I love this! I have been organizing a day camp for young adults and last year we added olympic games. I would love to have more info about your water balloon relay if you have time – I think they would really enjoy that! Thanks in advance!
Danielle Green says
The water balloon relay is one of my favorite event. We all get to be big kids and the premise is basically just a race to see what team can transfer the most water balloons into a bucket the fastest with various obstacles along the way. One year we had the starting two people have to stand together on a mini trampoline. Other years we have used towels and buckets along the way.
Lee says
Hi, love the post. What is the tic tac toe race?
Thanks in advance.
Lee
Danielle Green says
The Tic Tac Toe race started with a big tic tac toe chalked on the ground and each team lined up 20 feat behind it. One by one, each team member would run to the tic tac toe grid and place a bean bag on a spot. They had to run back to their team to tag the next player to run. The first team to get a tic tac toe won. It really didn’t pan out too well for us though.
Amanda Bruner says
Danielle Greene:
Could you be so kind as to send me these instructions and rules to my email? I so want to do this at my family reunion! It would be awesoMe
Danielle Green says
Hi Amanda, what instructions exactly are you in search of? For the most part, all of the basic instructions are included and I don’t have any more detailed instructions available.
Nikki says
This looks so much fun! What a great idea for using your own backyard to have a great time. Thanks for sharing!