Grade 2/3 World Games: The Great Canadian Snowball Game!

Living in Cambodia obviously doesn't allow for the wintery conditions of Canada where snowball fights in the winter are a common occurance. However, with a little improvisation, the great Canadian snowball game can played in the tropics. The kids love this game and although we exchange dodgeballs for snowballs and soccer nets turned around backwards for snowforts, it's still a winner. When I was a kid living back in Canada in the winter, we played this game all of the time. You could play with 2 kids or you could play with 32 kids, the size of the group didn't matter. The game started by creating teams. Each team had to build a snowfort as a means of protection. We used broken branches from trees to stick into the top of our snowfort and tied a piece of cloth to the brach creating a team flag.

Once all of the teams had built their snowfort and topped it off with their own flag, it was game on!  The object of the game was to knock the flag down. Snowballs were heaved back and forth endlessly by either staying behind your fort and throwing from that point (usually for the faint-hearted!) or you could run out into the battlefield to get closer to the target and throw. You put yourself at risk, but always had a greater chance of success. Each player would get ten lives. Each time you were hit by enemy fire, you lost a life. If you lost all of your lives, you were out.

If a team got their flag knocked down 5 times, the game was over.

The World Games version of the game played in Cambodia

The class is divided up into three teams. Each team has a plastic football goal (with netting) turned backward to act as the snowfort or protective barrier. If you do not have soccer goals, you can use whatever you can find (cardboard boxes, mats etc to act as the snowfort).  Get some form of stick and tape it to the top of the football net with a piece of paper acting as the flag. Set out dodgeballs and when each team has positioned their soccer goal somewhere around the playing area, the signal the start of the game.

Instead of giving each player ten lives, I opted to make them do ten jumping jacks outside the playing area if hit by the ball. If the team gets their flag knocked down 5 times, the entire team exits the playing area and does 20 burpees (kick-thrusts or a set number of jumping jacks) and can return to the game with 5 new lives.

Canadian winter games can be played in the tropics!! Try this game out.