25 Pioneer activities
 misc authors
 
  1. Have a Pioneer Parade!  Have each child bring a wagon, bike, etc. to decorate!  Have each child wear cowboy attire or a bonnet/shawl pioneer attire.  Sing "Pioneer Children Sang as They Walked."
  2.  Have a Taffy Pull.  There is a great recipe for this in the Lion House Cookbook.
  3. Set up a Path of the Pioneers.  Get wading pools (for the lakes), large boxes to climb over (mountains), and have the children follow an obstacle-like path.  Have popsicles at the end.
  4. Make sock dolls, play marbles, work on a sampler, do simple sewing, make butter with baby jars and cream, etc.
  5. Three legged races,
  6. eggs on spoons race,
  7. horseshoes (adults and kids both loved that!),
  8. sack races, etc
  9. Broom pull
  10. Taffy pull
  11. Square dance
  12. Fishing (for prizes)
  13.  Bob for apples
  14. Dress as pioneers, decorate wagons, have a parade (indoor or outdoor), prizes for costumes and participation
  15. Make girl sunbonnets & vests for the boys out of paper sacks.
  16. Watermelon seed spitting.
  17. Stick pulling - like Joseph Smith used to do.  Use a broom handle. Contestants sit on floor facing each other with stick in the middle, parallel to floor.  They both grab onto it with both hands and pull as hard as they can and see who can pull the other one up first
  18. "Pin the Tail on the Ox"
  19. "Pioneer Pictionary",
  20. "Wagon Wheel Toss" (we taped little cardstock wagon wheels to pennies),
  21. "Buffalo Bowling (bowling pins knocked down with a basketball),
  22.  "Pioneer Trek Toss" (we drew the U.S. on a large piece of cardboard, cut out holes for Nauvoo, Independence Rock and SLC and let the children try to throw bean bags through the holes in the order the pioneers traveled),
  23. "Fishing Pond" (we had the person running the game tell the children the story of the Seagulls and the Crickets. The fishing pole had a seagull taped  to the end of it and when they received their bag of goodies, there was a picture of a cricket inside)
  24.  "Pioneer Laundry Race" (we got 2 washboards and had the children take a piece of clothing out of a bucket full of water, wash it three times on the washboard and carry to another basket and squeeze out the water. The team with the most water in the second bucket won),
  25. "Pioneer Dress Up" (children raced against each other to dress in pioneer clothes and race to the finish line), and "Handcart Races" (we got children's wagons and had things the pioneers might take with them (pan, clothes, water, food, blanket, tools). The children had to load the wagon and race through an obstacle course without losing anything out of their wagon. Each child got a piece of candy at each station. If they won the game, they got two.