Trampoline Games: Ants In My Bed!
This is a cute trampoline game that lends itself to a variety of variations. Whether you are stressing eye-hand coordination when collecting the ants or drama with the expressions, it’s bound to beat your kid’s summer boredom!
Ants In My Bed!
For this trampoline game, you will need at least two players (see variation #3 for 1 player) and some small soft foam rubber balls (or balled up socks.) “Jimmy’ has an ant farm. Sometime during the night, they got out of their container and wound up in “Andy’s” bed. Jimmy awakes to hear Andy yelling and jumping on the bed (trampoline.) Jimmy tries to save his ants, by put them in a bag, before Andy bounces them all off the “bed.”
When there are no longer any ants in the bed, count the “saved” ants. Change roles. After both players have “collected the ants” see who saved the most ants. The one who saves the most ants wins.
To throw a little education into this activity, have the kids subtract to find out how many ants were saved and how many were lost.
Variation 1: If you use colored balls or socks, you can also have older children subtract to find out how many balls or socks of a particular color were saved and lost.
Variation 2: If you use all white socks and one pair of colored socks, the colored socks can be the queen and if the jumper (Andy) bounces the queen off, the game automatically ends because the colony will die without the queen.
Variation 3: If you only have one player on the trampoline, Mom or an adult can stand on the ground and put the balls on the trampoline while the child pretends to be asleep. When the adult says, “go,” the child “wakes up” and begins to jump. Then the adult uses a watch to find out how long it takes for the child to bounce all the “ants” off the “bed.”
This activity helps the kids learn subtraction and strategy skills. It’s also great fun for the kids to play and very humorous for adults to watch. Remember, watching is one of the six most important things you can do for your child in order to build great family memories!
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Don’t forget to pick up a few trampoline-champion trophies here to remind you of all the fun had on the trampoline.