Traditional Viking Games to Play with your Kids
Some of the games that we play at Viking in addition to traditional sports like soccer, handball, capture the flag, football, baseball, kickball, dodge ball, and basketball, you may never have heard of and might be curious to learn more about. We also love to incorporate fun relay races and other tag games to foster healthy competition at our camps and clinics. We believe in transparency here at Viking, and we felt like this might be a way to help strengthen this, so we want to give parents and potential parents and campers an idea of some of these other games. The following list of Viking games is here so that parents can have more of an idea of what their children, especially the younger ones, are talking about when they come home from camp with stories of what they did that day that they want to share. If your kids love any of these games, hopefully we can now provide you with the opportunity to play with them and teach them to your children’s’ friends and family members at home.
Reindeer Tails: Reindeer Tails is a camp favorite. At Viking camps, we use pinnies to play. At home you could use t-shirts, hand towels or flag football flags if you have them. The game is a great way to introduce flag football strategy to younger kids before incorporating a football. It is also great for sports involving sprints and the idea of coexisting offense and defense like soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, and lacrosse. In Reindeer tails, you tuck your pinnie into the side of your shorts. The goal is to pull other players’ pinnies out without getting yours taken first. Last person standing wins. Players aren’t allowed to block their pinnies with their hands or tuck them too far into their shorts to the point where it makes it difficult for other players to get them. They are allowed to move side to side and look for space within a pre-determined area to escape the grasps of opponents.
Individge: Individge is a dodge ball-like game that many of our older campers enjoy. It’s in the same spirit as Reindeer Tails wherein each player is for him or herself. The goal of the game is to hit the other players with a dodge ball (head shots don’t count), and the last player standing wins. The game is high-spirited, energetic and fosters that sense of healthy competition that meets the needs of many of our campers. Individge is a great game to build skills and interest in other throwing-related sports like handball, field activities in track and field, football, and rugby.
Battleship: Battleship is a typical Tournament Day activity. Some of the younger kids like to play it in between some of the more organized sports like soccer and capture the flag as an animated and interactive activity to break things up. You’ll have to leave it up to the kids to teach you all of the silly, spirited actions behind the commands like Lady on the Beach, Captain’s Coming, Land-Ho, Charlie’s Angels, and all of the others. Starboard, port, stern and bow are the four directions on a ship that are used in the game to let the players know which way to run. The coach calls out commands and players act accordingly. When players are running from one side of the ship to the other, coaches can tag them. If they are tagged, they get out. If one of the commands such as three-man or two-man lifeboat is called and a player can’t find a group in time, they are also out. On Tournament Day, this game is usually used to get points for your team, so the team with the most players up at the end wins. The younger kids find acting out the commands fun in and of itself and mostly aren’t concerned about the winning aspect of this game. They do enjoy the added tag component of the game to keep it lively, though. If you’re looking for a way to entertain your kids sometime or something to give to a babysitter to do, you could try asking your kids if they like battleship.
Wonder Ball: Wonder Ball is a game we play in a big circle. A ball – the “Wonder Ball” – is passed around as quickly as possible because the camper holding the ball when the song is over is out and sits in the middle for the next round. The Wonder Ball song is as follows:
“The Wonder Ball goes round and round,
So pass it quickly or you’re out.
If you’re the one to hold it last,
I fear for you the game has passed.”
Magic Scarves: Magic Scarves is a version of traditional capture the flag that we play with the younger campers. We use pinnies as the flags and put two piles of different colored pinnies on each side of the playing area. There are two teams and each team has the dual-role of trying to protect their pile by tagging any opposing players who cross the middle border of cones into their playing field so that the opposing team members can’t return with one of their pinnies. Each player is only allowed to take one pinnie at a time. The team with the most pinnies in their pile when time is up or the team who gets all of the pinnies on their side before time is up wins.