If you’ve ever been to an indoor climbing wall you may have noticed that the climbing holds attached to the wall are different colours. When climbers want to challenge themselves they can choose a route up the wall, or traverse along the wall, only using certain colours. The aim of the Horizontal Climbing Wall is to create your own challenge on the floor and then move across it only using certain colours.
Stuff needed:
- Coloured paper (or white paper and coloured pens or crayons).
- Scissors
- Some means of sticking paper to the floor (this will depend on what floor covering you have – Masking tape would probably be best).
- Floor space (a hallway works well but any space will do).
Instructions:
- Cut shapes out of different-coloured sheets of paper. If you don’t have coloured paper, use white paper then colour them different colours. The shapes need to be mostly about the size of a participant’s foot or larger though one or two small ones will add to the challenge. You will probably need at least 8 pieces of each colour.
- Stick the shapes to the floor, with different spaces between them, to make ‘routes’ of different colours. Make some routes harder than others (smaller shapes, bigger gaps, very close to walls etc.) Stick the pieces down quite well, particularly if you think people will most likely jump to make it to a particular spot, as the edges will crumple easily. (If your space is carpeted you may be able to use scraps of felt or old fabric cut into shapes instead).
- Choose a colour and navigate the route only using that colour. You may use any body part, but the challenge is to use only the right coloured spots.
To make it easier
- Allow participants (particularly if young children are joining in) to use two colours together to get across.
- Design the routes specifically for each participant.
- Young children enjoy jumping from spot to spot. If most of the participants are quite young, make the spots bigger and tape them down well on all sides to make this possible.
To make it harder
- Add a few spots of a certain colour to the walls and only allow touching of the wall on the correct coloured spot.
- Only allow each body part to be used a certain number of times (e.g. you may use each foot twice, but your hands as many times as you like).
What variations can you come up with on your Horizontal Climbing Wall? If you’d like to tell us about it, use the contact form!