winter family fun | Family Reunion Helper

How To Play Fox and Geese

The game of Fox and Geese is played in the snow where the players clear paths in the snow. As I have learned, in the “olden days”, the paths were made in the shape of a spoked wheel, but most of the fun for us has been to make our creative paths with special safety zone “nests” scattered throughout the paths.

Make Fox and Goose Trails

It’s best to play Fox and Geese when there is fresh snow on the ground or at least snow that no v one has been walking on. To make paths or trails, walk through the snow packing it down until it makes a clearing defined trail. Make several goose nests that are safety zones for the geese to get away from the fox. These are just a circle of packed down snow big enough for one person to stand in a time. You don’t want too many goose nests or it will be difficult for the fox to catch a goose.

How to Play Fox and Geese

Choose one person to be the fox. The fox tries to tag the rest of the players, who are the geese. All the players must stay within the boundaries of the paths. Whoever is tagged by the fox then becomes the fox and has to chase the geese. Only one goose can be in a nest at a time. If you have a big group playing you may have more than one fox.

A “No Snow” Alternative

An alternative to playing in the snow is to mark four squares on the playground, each 10 feet across. Every player stands on one of the lines forming the square. A signal is given, and the person who is “it” has 10 seconds to touch as many players as he/she can. Players who are tagged sit down in the marked area. All players must stay on the lines while being chased.

Fox and Geese Board Game

Another Fox and Geese Variation that I have recently become aware of is a “Fox and Geese” board game. It’s an old-time game using marbles. Fox chases Geese. Geese try to hem Fox in. If you’re from the country, you understand the strategy. Then game is available here and in the family reunion helper store.

What do you do when you have an old snowboard in your shed, six horses on winter vacation and five acres of snow in your pasture- you go skijoring!

Skijoring is a winter sport that originated in Scandinavia. It involves towing a skier behind horses or dogs. Having to choose between horse power and dog power- we choose the horses.

Horse skijoring usually takes two people and one horse. One person rides the horse while the skier is towed behind on skis or a snowboard.

The rider determines how fast you go and the route, while the skier holds on and tries to maintain enough control to maneuver around obstacles or perhaps towards obstacles such as a jump.

Skijoring How To

We saw a demonstration of horse skijoring at Ogden City’s Winter Fest a couple of years ago and have talked about giving it a try ever since, but this is the year we made it happen.

We began slowly, beginning first with an inner tube. Our horse, Raleigh, wasn’t very excited about a black donut following behind him, but with some patience and encouragement he soon caught on so we took the next step- we added a live person!

That didn’t seem to bother Raleigh so we strapped on the snowboard and that’s when the real skijoring began.

Skijoring Tips

We used a light, nylon rope for our skijoring which worked fine but hope to snag a waterskiing rope before we go skijoring again- the handle would be much more comfortable.

One thing we did discover was that when the horse made a turn the skier would be whipped around and would come right up to the side of the horse, very much like coming out of the wake when you are water skiing only a little more extreme.

Skijoring Jumps

Our first attempt at Skijoring was so much fun we couldn’t wait to go at it again and this time we decided to add a jump.

Even though it was a relatively small jump we did manage to get some air.

Raleigh- the Skijoring Hero

Although the humans did a great job at skijoring the true hero was Raleigh, our 8 year old bay Quarter horse who was thoroughly dried off and given an extra measure of oats at the end of the day.

Because there were a lot of people that wanted to get into the action we kept the four-wheeler running with inner tubes in tow.

When I do my family fun presentations I encourage families to “make the ordinary- extraordinary” and skijoring is a perfect example of that. All we did was took a look at what we had available to us and turned it into some extreme family fun.

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Tag Archives: winter family fun

Fox and Geese- a Snow Game