Shoe Mountain

Since everyone has shoes in their house–often a lot–you can use them when the kids need to let out some energy by playing the Shoe Mountain Jumping Game. Young kids love to jump and Shoe Mountain is a fun way to increase coordination and muscle awareness. There is a short way to play the Shoe Mountain game and a long one. The short way is to pile a bunch of shoes on one end of the room. Call the pile of shoes “Shoe Mountain”. One by one players start running from one end of the room towards the mountain and when they get there, leap over it! Make sure, of course, there is room to land on the other side of the mountain so nobody bangs into the wall! You can add to the joy of leaping by doing a drum roll. Add drum sounds by slapping your thighs or clapping your hands while the player is running. Then, as the child makes the grand leap, shout her name! It will sound like this: clapclapclapclapclap Roxanne! Children love hearing their name yelled out! You can make this fun game successful for all ages by spreading out that mountain so that it has some high points and some low. Just like real mountains do. The longer version of this Shoe Jumping Games has a trail leading to the Mountain. The trail starts with one shoe, then two, then three and so one. Each jump on the trail is a little longer than the one before and takes a little more energy to get over. The final jump is the leap or jump over the mountain. It takes good lower body strength and spatial awareness to jump increasingly longer distances and it’s a good challenge. If you want to add more challenges, ask your players to jump sideways or backwards or even add a twirl in the air before they land! Whether it’s a series of small jump or just a gigantic leap, you’ll find that big broad grins will also be part of this game!