How to survive camping for months on end

Camping Games: Cross Step

Boredom happens. Especially if you’re camping, and have been for, oh, forever (or actually 3 months now). If you’ve got a patch of pavement and some sidewalk chalk, you’ve got a great way to combat boredom. It’s simple, too.

Draw a grid of squares on the pavement. 10 by 10, 8 by 8, 9 by 7… whatever you choose. I used my shoe to measure about a foot… but, really, no big deal on size, as long as they are big enough to stand in. Mine ended up all wonkyjawed.

Each kid (2-6 players) needs a different colored piece of chalk. Everyone chooses a square to stand in.   One at a time, everyone STEPS to an adjacent square. They then CROSS out the square they were just standing in. Players can only move to a square that is touching their own, and they cannot step in a square that is occupied or has been crossed out. If a player can’t move to another square, he or she is out. The last one standing wins.

This is fascinating to see the strategies that develop after the first time playing…

For another way to play, if the kiddos get backed into a corner fairly quickly and there's alot of open squares left, they can jump to a new square that's not touching...