Last Man Standing Game

Do you think it’s a challenge to find activities for older grandchildren?

Yup. Me, too.

Here’s an idea of a strategic thinking game that you can play with them. All it takes is a piece of chalk and some space on your driveway.

With your sidewalk (or regular) chalk, draw a grid on the sidewalk similar to a checkerboard. (The more grandchildren playing, the more rows you might want to have. If you play this with fairly young grandchildren, you might want to have a square with just a few rows.)

Have each of your grandchildren stand on a square. It doesn’t matter where she stands. Give her a piece of chalk.

Taking turns, each grandchild moves to a new square. When the grandchild steps into a new square, she makes a mark with her chalk in the square she moved out of.

Grandchildren keep taking turns moving from square to square marking out the squares that they have occupied. They can move in any direction. However, they have to move to an adjacent square.

They cannot move into a square that has been marked or that is occupied. If a grandchild cannot move to a new square because all of the adjacent squares are either occupied or marked out, that grandchild is out of the game.

The goal is to be the last player left in the game.

To start a new game, ‘erase’ the marks out of the squares and start the play over.