It’s often very difficult for a child to play badminton. They haven’t grown the muscle and sometimes they’re only as big as a racket. It’s very common for children to get frustrated and bored when they play regular singles and doubles games because they just can’t keep the rally going. This can make it very difficult if you’re running a summer camp or kids badminton program so I’m going to show some fun badminton games for kids.

Let’s jump right in!

The first game is around the world. There are a few variations so I’m going to explain 2. For set up in both variations, you should aim to have over 8 people and then split them up into two groups. Then have the two groups split to the two sides.

In the first variation, I’m going to talk about standard around the world.

In this variation, a player would serve to the other side to start a rally. After the first player serves, he needs to run to the right to the back of the line on the other side. A player on the other side would receive the serve and once again run to the right to the back of the other line.

Keep going until someone hits the shuttle out or misses it. If someone hits it out or misses it they either lose a life or get eliminated, depends on you. Then the side with more players would serve and the cycle restarts. Once you end up with only 2 players, you basically have them play a short game against each other. You would probably want to add some variation like a spin after each shot.

The other variation is team around the world. Once again someone serves and then another person hits the shuttle. But this time, players do not move to the other side. Instead, they would want to move to the back of their own line. With this variation either play until one side is eliminated or have people lose their racket if they miss.

If you have a group playing around the world, one thing to consider is skill. If some players are much better than others, it may become necessary to ban shots like smashes, drops, and net shots and team around the world would do much better with losing rackets instead of elimination.

Around the world is an all-around great game to improve children’s fitness.

Sometimes fun badminton games for kids don’t need rackets at all! Shuttle dodge ball is actually a great way to improve children’s badminton swings. Swinging overhead shots in badminton is the same motion as throwing something so this is a great way to improve strength and technique.

To play this game, you need a bunch of shuttles and two sides. The sides should be pretty small because throwing shuttles far is actually very difficult even for strong adults. I recommend the length that you’re throwing should be the size of half of a badminton court. Once you’ve got your playing field set-up, the rest is normal dodge ball. Hit someone with a shuttle and they’re eliminated.

Half-court games with variations are good for more skilled children, children that can keep rallies going. This game is the closest to standard badminton so it generally improves quality of shots and such. With this one I’ll list a few variations that you can play.

1. Cover One Eye

Self-explanatory. Have players cover one eye, it makes it extremely difficult to hit the shuttle and can be very amusing to watch and play. Although it can also be frustrating as well.

2. Only underhand

Sometimes we forget how useful our overhead shots are. In this game, all the shots you make have to be below the waist which makes hitting shots at the back very awkward.

3. Hitting to Certain Places Give Extra Points

This one is great training for accuracy. On a half court, there are 6 boxes, two in front, two in the middle, and two in the back. I like to give extra points for hitting in the narrow boxes and hitting the opponent, a bit less extra for the wide boxes in the front and back, and no points for hitting in the middle large box. You can also make it more difficult by making certain boxes out of bounds instead of awarding bonus points.

4. Play to 11 With Certain Rules

This game is quite interesting. You can only clear and lift if you have two or fewer points. You can play any shot except the smash if you have 7 or fewer points. And once you have over 7 points, you can play any shot.

5. Play With Non-Dominant Hand

Like the cover one eye variation, this one is basically the same. Play with your non-dominant hand so if you’re right-handed, play left-handed and vice versa. If you combine this one with covering one eye, now you’ve got something that’s truly amusing to watch but frustrating to play.

There are a lot more variations you can play. Combine these, think of new ones, be creative!

While this game isn’t necessarily a badminton game, who doesn’t love a classic game of tag!

If you’re running a school program, summer camp or whatever, it’s important to add in a fitness part but doing standard drills will only demotivate the children. This is why tag is great. It improves stamina, agility, and speed; all of which are important to badminton.

It’s probably likely that you already know what tag is but to make sure, have someone be “it” and then that person is supposed to run around tagging people by tapping others. There are many variations, the classic is tagging someone which transfers your position of “it” to them, tagging and eliminating, or my favorite, zombie tag. Zombie/infection (or whatever new names they have now) tag is where the person that is “it” tags someone else and then they both become “it”. Eventually it spreads like a zombie virus until everyone is tagged.

So that concludes my post on some fun badminton games for kids.

There are many more variants of each game, and more games themselves but I hope you’ve got some ideas or inspiration for your next games. Remember that every kid has different likes and dislikes so it may take some testing to find the game that the majority truly likes.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and as always, good luck in your games and have a great day!