Mom's Handy Book of Backyard Games

Combining old favorites with some new activities, this book features more than 100 great games. And the book's handy size ensures that Mom (or anyone else that needs access to great ideas for kids' entertainment) can slip it into her purse, pool bag or suitcase pocket and access this fabulous assortment of games in the backyard, the park, the beach or even traveler's rest stops. The book also features two indexes so that Mom can find the right game for any situation: one index divides the games by age-level, the other divides the games by equipment required.

From the Introduction: One day, during a summer vacation at the New Jersey Shore, I witnessed an amazing development. A large group, consisting of several grownups and enough children to choke a van, arrived and claimed its section of beach. While the kids helped the grownups lay down blankets and set up beach umbrellas, one of the adult males began digging an elaborate sand castle with an army entrenching tool. Fascinated, I watched him dig - first a moat, then a spiraling mountain fortress with a winding highway that went all the way to the top. After completing this garrison, the man dumped out on the sand a boxload of soldiers and military ordnance that would have made General Patton green with envy. He then turned to the kids and said: "Have fun." Then he tossed his hat, t-shirt and sunglasses onto a blanket and took off for the surf while the kids began what turned out to be an all-day round of play on his marvelous mountain of sand. When it came to child's play, that man had the right idea. Too often, adults stifle their children's natural creativity with supervised and well-defined (and well-intentioned) activities. Like that unknown Jersey Shore sand sculptor, this book aims to provide children with the groundwork for fun: activities with minimal adult supervision, and ground rules that the kids can bend and shape at will into their own form of entertainment. The activities outlined on these pages range from ancient to very modern. Some games and rhymes were handed down by my grandparents to my mother and father, and from my wife and I to our own children. Others were spawned in the 1990s, when our kids and their playmates blasted off into that magic world of backyard play and were left to their own wonderful devices. To kids everywhere - from Ralph, Janis, Carol, Regina, Albert, Raymond, Donald, Dougie, Andrew, Louie and the rest of my gang from so long ago, to Andy, Nancy, Kent, Brock, Jill, Jenny and the others who currently fan the flame of fun and play -this book is dedicated.