Half the fun of a backyard party is the stuff you cannot buy at Target. These 24 DIY backyard games are the ones that turn a patch of grass into the place everybody wants to be, and most of them come out of a single trip to the hardware store. There is giant Jenga cut from 54 feet of 2×4, lawn dominoes painted on eleven inch blocks, ladder golf you can take apart and throw in the trunk, a washers box that folds shut with two latches, and a plinko board built out of three sheets of foam. Some want a miter saw and a Saturday. Others want three pool noodles and ten minutes. Start with the tools you already own.
1. How to Make a DIY Backyard Kerplunk Game
The tabletop version of this game is about a foot tall. This one is waist high, and it is built on a metal side table turned upside down or a tomato cage, which is the part that saves you from building a frame at all. A roll of wire fencing wraps the base, cut to the measured circumference plus a three inch allowance, and solid wire ties it closed. Wooden dowels push through the mesh in every direction to form the lattice, then plastic play balls go in on top. Pull dowels one at a time and try not to be the one who drops the balls.
Get the full tutorial at DIY JOY.
2. Lawn Dominoes
Twenty eight dominoes come out of two 2x6x10 boards and one 2x6x8, all untreated pine, cut into eleven inch pieces. Sand every face before any paint goes near them, because outdoor pine splinters and these get handled by bare hands all summer. The set here uses Glidden exterior flat in Peacock Blue, Hawaiian Teal and Muslin White, and that paint covered in a single coat. The dots are the fiddly part, so cut a 5.5 by 11 inch cardboard template with the center line and one and an eighth inch circles marked on it, trace every tile, then fill them in. Store the finished set in a basket.
Get the full tutorial at Iron and Twine.
3. DIY Tic Tac Toe Game
This one is small enough to throw in a camping bin, and the board is a 14 by 8 inch offcut finished in dark walnut stain. The grid was cut as a vinyl stencil and painted white, which is the honest answer to why hand-painted lines never look straight. Ten smooth backyard rocks become the pieces, five with white X’s and five with O’s. Seal the rocks and the board both with polyurethane so a rain shower does not undo an afternoon of painting. A small bowl glued to the board with industrial adhesive keeps the pieces from scattering across the yard.
Get the full tutorial at Tatertots and Jello.
4. DIY Washers Game
Washers is two boxes set twenty one feet apart with a PVC cup in the middle of each, three points in the cup and one in the box. The build takes one 2×4 twelve feet long, or two at six feet, plus two 17 by 17 inch plywood squares. Cut the frame pieces at seventeen inches with 45 degree miters, and the trick people get wrong is that the angle goes on the two inch face and the cuts run toward each other, not parallel. Four inch PVC from the plumbing aisle makes the cup. Two latches fold the halves into one carry case, and grass carpet is optional.
Get the full tutorial at Amusing MJ.
5. DIY Football Toss Outdoor Game
A folding A-frame target built from flat-top cedar fence boards, which cost a fraction of dimensional lumber and weather beautifully. The cut list is four 3.5 inch boards at four feet, four more at two feet and seven 5.5 inch boards at two feet. Mark both target circles with a nail and a length of string used as a compass, four inches of string for the eight inch hole and six for the twelve inch one. Drill a starter hole and cut with a jigsaw. Pocket holes go outside the circle lines so no screw ends up in the cutout. Two utility hinges let the whole thing fold flat.
Get the full tutorial at The Crafty Blog Stalker.
6. DIY Giant Jenga
Fifty four blocks, fifty four feet of 2×4, cut at a hair over ten and a half inches each. That “hair over” matters: a 2×4 is really an inch and a half thick and three and a half wide, so three blocks side by side need a touch more than three times 3.5 to stack without binding. Use a sharp blade and sand hard with 100 to 120 grit, because splinters are the only thing that ruins this game. Staining a third of the blocks in a darker tone makes the tower read as a piece of decor. Finish with paste wax or hemp oil, never a glossy poly.
Get the full tutorial at Lemon Thistle.
7. DIY Ladder Golf Game
Most ladder golf builds use PVC. This one is wood, and it comes apart into eight pieces for the trunk, which is the reason to choose it. Four 2x4s do the work, 48 inches for the uprights and 36 for the base feet, with plywood triangles bracing the joints. Six one inch dowels cut to 36 inches make the rungs. Four inch bolts with washers and wing nuts join the uprights to the bases, so the whole set knocks down by hand with no tools. Three points for the top rung, two for the middle, one for the bottom, first to exactly 21. Set the ladders about fifteen feet apart.
Get the full tutorial at Homemade Heather.
8. How to Build a DIY Backyard Connect Four
A standing Connect Four frame built from plywood sheets with 2x2s sandwiched between two faces to make the slots the discs drop through. The holes are cut with a hole saw, which is what keeps every opening the same size and round enough for a frisbee to fall cleanly instead of jamming halfway down. Frisbees are the discs, and they are the reason this works outdoors: cheap, weatherproof and already in two colors. Hinges and velcro hold the bottom closed so you can release a whole game at once, then paint it in whatever two colors you want to be shouting about.
Get the full tutorial at DIY JOY.
9. DIY Patriotic Ladder Golf
The PVC version, and it comes in around twenty dollars, or under ten if you skip the paint. Each ladder takes three quarter inch pipe: nine two foot pieces, six one foot pieces, six T fittings and six 90 degree elbows. Leave the joints dry rather than gluing them and the whole thing breaks down for storage. Spray paint made specifically for plastic is what stops the red, white and blue flaking off in a season. The bolas here use twelve tennis balls instead of golf balls, drilled with a 5/16 bit, threaded on nylon cord with a paper clip bent into a needle, knotted either side with about twelve inches between the pair.
Get the full tutorial at Mom Endeavors.
10. How to Make LED Cornhole Boards
Cornhole with LED strips run around the hole and along every edge of the playing surface, which is the version that keeps the game going after the sun drops. The boards are built the standard way from plywood on a 2×4 frame, cut and assembled before any wiring happens, and the lights go on last. A different color on each board is what lets two teams claim a side without anybody keeping track. Wooden boards left outside through a wet season warp and split, so build the frame square, seal the playing face and store them somewhere dry.
Get the full tutorial at DIY JOY.
11. Backyard Bowling Alley
A full lane in the backyard, which sounds absurd until you see one built. The photograph here shows the business end: a painted orange gutter rail running alongside a smooth plywood lane, and that rail is the whole difference between bowling and rolling a ball into the hedge. A backyard lane does not need regulation length to be fun, it needs a flat, level, sealed running surface and something to stop the ball at both ends. The page on DIY JOY sets out the idea and then hands you off to the full step by step plans, which is where the lane dimensions live.
Get the full tutorial at DIY JOY.
12. DIY Lawn Checkers
The pieces are five gallon paint bucket lids, hot glued back to back in pairs so each checker has two good faces, then sprayed red or black and sealed with a clear UV coat. Buy a few spare lids for the kings. The slow part is genuinely the first step, peeling the labels off with Goo Gone, and the lids have to be clean before any paint touches them. The board is a twelve foot square of astro turf rug taped off into sixty four twelve inch squares, with every other square and the border sprayed white. Tape straight onto a driveway works just as well.
Get the full tutorial at Jessie Daye.
13. Squirt Gun Water Races
A water course rather than a game board, and it is the cheapest thing here. Plastic cups get a hole drilled through them, then thread onto a taut string strung across the yard so they can slide along it, taped in place at the ends. Players race their cup from one end to the other using nothing but a squirt gun aimed at the back of it. The version photographed runs three stages, under a balcony, across a patio to the grass and finishing at a shallow pool. Scooping water out of the pool counts as cheating. Time each run if you want an actual winner.
Get the full tutorial at Design Dazzle.
14. Spring Time Tic-Tac-Toe
The board is a single slice of log with the grid burned or painted straight onto the cut face, and the pieces are river rocks painted as ladybugs and bumble bees. Leave about a quarter of each rock unpainted at one end for the head, which is what makes them read as insects rather than dots. Yellow needs around five coats to cover stone, red three or four and black two, so this is an evening of thin coats rather than one thick one. Wood burning the grid lasts far longer outdoors than paint does. Painted rocks are a choking hazard, so watch anyone small.
Get the full tutorial at Chicken Scratch NY.
15. DIY Backyard Plinko Game
Three thirty by twenty inch foam boards, about fifty toothpicks and a roll of duct tape build the whole thing. Two long strips glue to the sides of the second sheet, a four inch piece makes the base and a two inch strip across the front is the lip that stops chips shooting off. The third sheet duct tapes on as a hinge so the board props itself up. The pegs are toothpicks with the tips snipped off, dipped in glue and pushed through one layer of foam only. Recycled lids, spray painted, are the chips.
Get the full tutorial at Happiness is Homemade.
16. Crazy Cans
Sixteen ounce tomato cans, washed out, painted in soft pastels and stacked into a pyramid against a fence. The bean bags are the good idea here: dollar store iPod sock cases filled with rice through a funnel, deliberately left part empty so they stay squishy and light, then run closed on a sewing machine. Light bags matter, because a heavy bag knocks the whole pyramid flat on the first throw and the game is over. File or tape any sharp rim left by the can opener before a child picks one up. The same post covers a balloon-launching wooden spoon game.
Get the full tutorial at Two Shades of Pink.
17. DIY Koob Game
Koob, or kubb, is the Scandinavian one where you throw batons at wooden blocks to knock down the other team’s line before going after the king. A full set is one king pin at 3.75 by 3.75 by 13 inches, eight koob blocks at 3.75 by 3.75 by 6 inches and six to twelve throwing sticks at 1 by 1 by 12 inches. Round every edge with sandpaper, since these get thrown and caught barehanded all afternoon. Two to twelve players, age five and up, and it plays on grass, dirt, gravel or concrete. A homemade set runs about twenty five to thirty dollars in lumber.
Get the full tutorial at Let's Get Together.
18. Giant Pick Up Sticks
Twenty four to thirty six bamboo yard stakes from the garden aisle, split into five color groups plus one black stick, which is the one worth the most when somebody finally lifts it clean. The painting trick is the good part: push the stakes into the ground, spray one side, then flip them and do the other, so nothing has to be laid out on newspaper or held. A clear coat over the top afterwards is what keeps the color through a summer of being dropped on wet grass. Wooden dowels work the same way.
Get the full tutorial at Nellie Bellie.
19. Sticky Tic Tac Toe
A sheet of foam board covered in six strips of felt, with the grid laid over it in duct tape. The stick is peel and stick velcro, cut small and stuck to both sides of ordinary ping pong balls, which is why it sets up in minutes and survives a whole afternoon of being thrown at. The creator plays it as a solo challenge, three balls a turn, three in a row to win. Give a younger child four or five balls instead. Two colors of ball, or a Sharpie, turns it into a two player game.
Get the full tutorial at Frugal Fun for Boys.
20. DIY Wooden Yard Dice
Six wooden blocks between three and a half and four inches, and the creator’s own limit is not to go over four inches if children are playing, because a bigger die gets heavy fast. Sand all six faces and round the edges slightly, which both helps them tumble and stops the corners splitting. The dots here are burned in with a wood burner fitted with a circular stamp, marked out in pencil first, and the tool needs reheating time between applications. Two coats of gel polyurethane with about twelve hours between them finishes them. Snake Eyes is the game: roll into a three foot rope circle, first to 21.
Get the full tutorial at Sometimes Homemade.
21. Easy DIY Rainbow Paver Hopscotch
Twelve inch concrete garden pavers, the common kind from any hardware store, laid out in the classic hopscotch shape and spray painted across the tops in a rainbow run. The sides are left bare on purpose, because the pavers settle into the lawn anyway and painting them is wasted. The numbers go on afterwards in leftover exterior latex with a one inch foam brush. Spread a sheet of kraft paper under everything first to keep overspray off the grass. About thirty minutes of work, and it doubles as a dry path across a soggy side yard.
Get the full tutorial at Happiness is Homemade.
22. Nature Scavenger Hunt
Not a build at all, which is why it belongs on a list of yard games: a free printable card carrying both pictures and words for each thing to find, so a child who cannot read yet can still play without an adult narrating it. The card in the photograph is clipped to a paper lunch bag, and that bag is the whole rest of the kit. Items run to pinecones, three different flowers, three kinds of leaves, a flat skipping rock, a Y-shaped twig, something rough and something smooth. Readers have swapped the list to match their own coastline, which is exactly the right instinct.
Get the full tutorial at Five Little Chefs.
23. Pool Noodle Ring Toss
Three pool noodles and two ground stakes, and it is playable in about ten minutes. Two noodles get bent into circles and taped closed at the ends with duct tape to make the rings. The third gets cut in half with a utility knife, and each half slides down over a ground stake pushed into the lawn, which is what turns a metal spike into something safe to throw rings at. Space the stakes however far apart suits whoever is playing, and move them closer for small children rather than letting them fail every throw. Keep score or do not.
Get the full tutorial at Trish Sutton.
24. DIY American Ninja Warrior Backyard Obstacle Course
Five obstacles, none of them fixed to anything, so the course gets rebuilt into a new layout every time. The hurdles are three quarter inch PVC, two T joints and two elbows each, with spare lengths cut so the height can change. The favorite element is sloped stepping stones built from free pallets with twelve inch legs and a plywood top screwed on to spread the weight. Flat stones are pressure treated boards cut into twelve inch squares and sanded. Balance beams are four by fours. The creator’s own note: supervise this one.
Get the full tutorial at Frugal Fun for Boys.
