Kids & Play

#66 · Living room relay race

Run a chopstick relay around the living room furniture. The most prestigious sporting event of any given Tuesday.

A relay where the baton is a single chopstick, run through an obstacle course made of the furniture. It is exhausting, extremely silly, and reliably the best twenty minutes of a children's party.

How to do it

1. Build a course - under the table, round a chair, over a cushion.
2. Split into teams and mark a clear changeover point.
3. Run the course carrying the chopstick, then hand it over cleanly at the changeover.
4. A dropped baton means going back to the changeover point and starting that leg again.

Why it works

A chopstick is a bad baton, and that is the entire design. It is thin, light and easy to fumble in a way a foam baton is not, so the handover becomes the hard part rather than the running. That slows everyone down at exactly the moment when they are going fastest, which is both safer and much funnier.

Variations worth trying

• Balance a marshmallow on the end for older children.
• Carry it flat on an open palm rather than gripped.
• Time each team rather than racing head to head, if the age range is wide.