One of the biggest perks of working for an outdoor toy company is that sometimes you get to try out new products on your family. This means taking home some equipment for the weekend.
This weekend I had the pleasure (much to a few colleagues’ dismay) of trying out one of our newest trampolines. Working in the marketing department, this is quite a rare occurrence so I was very pleased with myself and told the family to be prepared for a fun filled bouncy weekend! At first, the children thought I was bringing home a bouncy castle but when I produced the trampoline they were a little disappointed!
My partner and I then spent an hour putting the thing up in the garden – which was easier than I thought it would be – then set the kids loose on it. I’m not sure the neighbours were particularly pleased when the majority of their weekend was interrupted by squeals and squeaks of excitement from our garden! And that was just me!
On a serious note however, I knew I would have to take it back after the weekend so tried to think up as many ways to have fun using the trampoline as possible! Being a little creative we came up with the following games and I would encourage you to have a go. If you don’t have a trampoline then it will be worth the investment I can assure you – and is also great exercise for the children.
The Bouncy Quiz Game # 1
One of you starts bouncing on the trampoline whilst the others walk or jog around the outside on the ground. The person bouncing asks a question and if anyone running round the outside gets the answer correct, they get to switch places with the bounce. They then become the new bouncer and question master. If you want to make the game a bit more tense, You could keep score of how many times each person is the bouncer and after so many goes, the one who has spent the least time on the trampoline is out until there is only one person left – the winner!
 The Bouncy Quiz Game # 2 (or ‘bunny in the middle’ as the children called it)
This version has the opposite goal – being on the trampoline in this game is a bad thing. You could use trivial pursuit or another quiz for this and have one nominated ‘quiz master’ who will read out the cards. Each player has a turn and is read a question. They have to keep bouncing until they get a question correct. You can decide yourselves how best to score the game. We used a stop watch every time the question was asked and added the times together on a score board, so the person with the lowest time won. To make it fairer, it would be good to tailor the questions to each age range if you are playing with a variety of ages.
Needless to say we all had a fabulous weekend of fun with the trampoline and I will be seriously thinking about getting one of my own now.
Written by Abbi Stewart, one of ‘thePlayExperts’ at Big Game Hunters Trampolines Shop.
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