If you have have a child in elementary to middle school, maybe even older, you probably have heard of Roblox. Is it just me or is it a bit of a craze right now?? If you haven’t heard of it, it’s essentially a gaming app, and within it there are all different kinds of games kids can play; some are simple and silly, while some are more complex. My son likes to play games in Roblox like hide and seek, the floor is lava, and the Roblox version of an obstacle course: “obbys”.
When we were trying to decide what to do for his birthday he said he wanted a Roblox theme, and one of my nieces sent me a video of a “real life obby”, and Jackson loved that idea. We put together our own obstacle course in my parents backyard so he and his friends could experience a real life obby! There wasn’t a ton of info out there so I went off the video my niece sent me which I can link for you! But Jackson had his own input. Here were a couple of his 6 year old insights:
• In Roblox the characters always jump with two feet, so everyone should either be able to walk or jump through the course.
• In between each obstacle there is a checkpoint so if you fall or mess up on an obstacle you just go back to the check point instead of starting from the very beginning.
So here is what we did:
Obstacle one: Hopscotch rings. The kids had to hop through without touching the edges. Sometimes they ran through, but it was more about fun and letting them do what they wanted! These were an amazon find.
Obstacle two: The army crawl. I wanted a set of two poles the kids had to crawl under but I wanted to use something soft and make it adjustable. I bought two sturdy wooden dowels from the craft store, as well as some thick but soft rope, and then two pool noodles from the dollar store. We put one dowel in the ground and one directly across from it on the other side of the sidewalk, then the did the same with the second set of dowels. Next we strung the rope through the pool noodles and cut the rope on each side with enough extra to tie securely to each dowel on both sides. We made the second pool noodle lower to the ground to add to the challenge. Lastly we put a blanket on the ground to protect the kids skin while crawling. See bottom right corner of this picture:
Obstacle three : DIY balance beam. We bought a 4×4 and 4 cinder blocks to have two balance beans. My dad screwed a 2×4 perpendicular on each end then placed each end in a cinder block. We then placed the beams on the cinder blocks to create height. You could use a strong twine and tie the beams to the cinder blocks too.
Obstacle four: Cone jump. I found a set of plastic cones at the dollar store and my dad gave me the idea of setting two cones across from each other and tying rope from the tip of one to the other and have the kids jump over the rope. Tying the rope to the top of the cones made it so it wasn’t too taught, and if the kids missed the jump the rope would slip off and the kids wouldn’t trip and fall.
[To make the Roblox sign decoration I simply painted the logo onto poster board, duct taped them to paint stirrers and stuck them in the ground!]
Obstacle five: Block run. I found the squishy colored cubes at the target dollar section! We originally were going to have the kids jump from cube to cube, but Jackson decided he’d rather weave through them, so that’s what we did! (Pictured above) The kids just ran through them!
Obstacle six: Box leaps. I saved some long narrow boxes from random deliveries, painted them bright colors on top, and taped the sides and bottom with black duct tape. I set up three in a row, shortest to tallest so it would get increasingly difficult, and the kids had to jump over them.
Obstacle seven: Stepping stones. This was an amazon find inspired by the YouTube video I watched. They are essentially short buckets attached with rope that I set out in a zigzag pattern, and the kids either jumped or stepped from one to another.
Obstacle eight: another balance beam. We ended the course with another balance beam!
For the start, end and check points I decided to paint them onto the ground with sidewalk chalk paint that I found in the target dollar spot!
My dad is super creative and he made some extra activities for the kids when they weren’t doing the obby. He bought a small section of green turf and bordered it with some old wooden beams he had in his garage to create a small putting green. He dug a hole in the ground and placed a bucket in the hole to create the hole for the golf ball. Then he took an old net that he used when he went fishing it crabbing and stuck in the ground and set out some baseballs for the kids to toss the baseballs into the net! Finally, he had two old metal poles and he created a limbo set up! The kids loved doing all of this! I set up a play tunnel too for the smaller kids. You can see all the extra activities in this picture:
It was such a fun time and I was so happy with how we pulled it off! The kids had fun and that was the goal after all!
Hope you enjoyed reading about our Roblox Obby party it inspires you to get creative for your next party!!
