Lawn bowling sets for kids

Toy Time 10-pin — best overall

The only set that publishes everything a parent needs in one place: 11-inch pins, a 7.75 lb total weight, a bag size and an age floor of three. It is the pick on the main outdoor bowling page and it stays the pick here.

Hey! Play! 13-piece — the indoor rainy-day option

Published for indoor or outdoor use and for ages three and up. It does not publish a pin height, which is the one gap, but a set that legitimately moves indoors is worth something in a wet spring.

STERLING 11 in — the set that survives the summer

Heavy solid wooden pins at a published 11 inches. Heavier pins stand better on imperfect grass and shrug off being knocked down all afternoon; the trade is that a small child cannot carry the bag.

The set matters less than the setup with this game. Three adjustments turn it from a novelty into the thing that gets played every weekend.

• Move the bowling line, not the pins. A four-year-old rolling from six feet and an adult from twenty are playing the same game at the same difficulty. This is the single change that makes it work across ages.
• Mark the pin positions. Ten pins reset dozens of times an afternoon, and without marks the triangle drifts until the game stops being the same game. Ten small pegs, or a chalk mark on a hard surface.
• Score by pins, not by frames. Ten-pin frame scoring is a mathematics lesson. Count the pins that fall and add them up — children keep track of that happily and the game keeps moving.

For the youngest players, the set also doubles as a target game: stand the pins in a line rather than a triangle and it becomes closer to skittles. The wider question of matching a game to a small child is in yard games for toddlers and preschoolers.