7 Fun Shooting Games for Kids

Basketball shooting games are a good way to teach fundamentals and have fun at the same time during your practices. While coaching youth basketball, we must have in mind that we are working with children, and all the children want is to have fun. Not only are your baby players are going to relax and feed off of some good energy, but after having fun they are going to respond much better to other, more serious drills.

It is pure magic if you are able to come up with the games that are going to be fun and that are going to be useful in terms of improvement of an aspect of a game.

In this article, we are going to try and show you some fun shooting games that you can incorporate into your player development plan that is going to bring a sense of joy and some relief from everyday drills to your young core.

We are not going to describe the game of HORSE because we all know how the missed shots bring letters and the player that gathers all the letters have to yell HORSEEE.

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This game does not require a high level of shooting ability from your players so it is perfect for youth basketball. This fun shooting game requires at least two players, but for the team purpose, you can form two different teams and make them compete. The goal of the game is to make a shot from every marked position on the court.

If you take a look at the picture, you are going to see that the spots are close to the basket, so this version is ideal for younger ballers because they are going to shoot close-range and mid-range jumpers with only one three-point shot.

For the older kids, you can add some more three-point shots or you can ban the off-the-backboard shots, etc, etc.

The winner is the player who makes all the shots first and ends the game with the three-pointer. If it is a competition between the groups, then you can add that the one player is taking shots from the marked positions and the rest of his team is rebounding for him. Every player has to make all the shots in order to win.

Mark a number of spots on the court and make the players take shots from those spots. As they do in Golf, make your players count how many shots did they took until they have scored a basket. 

The spots should be adapted to a specified age group so they should not be too far from the basket. I mean, we don't want an 8-year kid to shoot from around the center.

Every player should count how many shots did it took him before scoring, and then they should compare the takes and who scored the basket with fewer shots wins that spot/hole. 

The winner of the whole game is a player who has won more spots.

This is a basketball version of a game of musical chairs. Take some balls and put them in the circle. The same number of players should stand and run around the balls. You can make players walk, run, hop, move in a stance around the balls while the music is playing, and when the music stops they must search for the ball and shoot. The first ball that goes in, that player gets a point. Whoever gathers 5 points is a winner.

You can play music with your phone. It's enough for the game.

TexFor this game what you need to do is to divide a team into two even groups. The first group will be shooters and the second group will be dribblers.

The shooters are going to shoot the ball from a preset spot on the court.

The dribblers are going to be in the baseline corner.

The goal for the dribbler is to dribble the ball in a sprint around the half-court and make a "home run" and the shooter's object is to score and get the dribbler out of the game.

The dribblers get a point if their player manages to dribble the ball all around the half-court and a shooter does not manage to score.

You can play the game to 10 points and then switch the roles.

The winners are the team who have a better score differential.

Divide the team into groups of 3 or 5 and make sure that everybody has the ball. Then, determine two spots on the floor that are going to represent the places where the shots will be taken. Those shots need to be beyond the comfort zone of your age group. 

Make your groups stand in line which is a few meters from the designated shooting spot. 

Make each player sprint/hop/crawl/do push-ups before they are taking a shot. 

Whoever makes more of those hard shots wins.

Divide the team into two identical groups and make them stand in line and shoot from the same spot. Every team has its own ball, and if the shooter misses the shot he needs to rebound it and get back to the spot and take another shot until he scores, and then the next player is taking shots.

The winner is the first team that runs out of shooters.

For this game, everybody needs to have a ball and everybody needs to stand in line. There is a marked place from where the player is shooting. If the first player misses the shoot, he needs to go and rebound the ball and make a put-back because the next player can shoot and if he scores before the put-back, then the player that missed first goes out of the game. The winner is the last man standing.

Fun shooting games or any joyful drill are really going to help your young basketball players develop a love for the game. And with that love, the sense of getting better and the sense of improvement is going to boost them to easier accept all of those hard drills that are much needed if they want to become good players.

Our job is to teach them fundamentals, but our purpose is to teach them to love basketball.