Great Game Ideas for This Thanksgiving

It's that time of the year when lists are drawn up - for guests, for grocery to be purchased and for listing out ideas to keep the guests busy! A time for friends and family to gather at the end of the year does translate to a lot of hard work, but it can be pepped up with some fun, music and games. The food of course is the pièce de résistance, the preparation of which takes many hours. Some of the guests might help, but there will definitely be a need for some games(not the ones on TV!) especially as children will be around. 

The 87th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade by Anthony Quintano

Here are a few ideas for games which can be used as fillers while the turkey cooks:

1. Who's the 'Best' from The Idea Room is a game where people of all ages can pitch in. People can be divided into teams to see who's the best at something silly like who can crab walk fastest or who can stand on one leg for the longest time!

2. Doing the turkey waddle is a good competition for a group which is predominantly young. Party Game Ideas suggests getting an inflated turkey to be held between the legs while waddling . If you can't get an inflatable turkey, try using a pillow or a pillowcase stuffed with soft things.

3. Card Games from Delia Creates are an all time favorite, be it Uno or fun games using a regular deck. As the number of players increase more packs can be added in.

4. An activity card like the one from alpha mom could be handed out to all at home just to have fun. Once done, it would be nice to see who gets and see how many get it all correct. Every person who gets it all correct, gets a gift. It could be a fruit or chocolate bar if you wish to keep it simple.

Well, enjoy your Thanksgiving!

3 great sites for science experiments

Teaching science can be extremely rewarding. When science worksheets get uninteresting, teaching science can happen via experiments. Kids love doing things on their own (with a little supervision and help of course). Learning science this way is the most rewarding for it makes the science real, enjoyable and stays in the mind of the child.

Mad science Invitation 4 by Martin Cron

3 great websites for science experiments -

1. Science Buddies
This site has experiments for kids of all ages. Some of the science fair projects are really good teaching kids to take accurate measurements and going  through data understanding and coming to conclusions. To get some ideas for science fair projects, a short questionnaire checks the child's interests. From popping corn to more complex experiments, this site covers science experiments involving food, biology, chemistry and other fields.

2. School of Dragons
This site teaches science via games and experiments, with characters from the How to Train Your Dragon series. There are some experiments in the lab and many others are quests which use science to solve problems in the Viking world. Most of the curriculum taught is in sync with NGSS standards. There's fiery lava, frozen Arctic islands, flying dragons, prosthetics for man and dragon, growing food, weather and a whole bunch of problems from everyday life. The botanist teaches about plants and biology, Heather helps with lab experiments, while Fishlegs and Hiccup list dragons and their behavior. Watch some of the Youtube videos to know more. Best of all the site lets you hatch a dragon egg and fly it!

3. Science Bob
This guy is fun and this website is a mine of science experiments. Kids and adults love watching these science experiments on TV. Science Bob is a teacher, maker and a TV presenter. Some of his experiments require adult supervision. Many of his experiments have videos we could watch and enjoy. Even visitors to the site can contribute experiments.

Many experiments can be started fairly early in the life of a child. It need not be called an experiment, it could just be a fun activity and it's really good to use ordinary stuff lying around. Science activities must take a child beyond just 'doing' the experiment. It should enthuse a child to try other experiments, get involved with problem-solving, hypothesize, test and try new experiments in spite of failures. Starting from the simple but elegant experiment of floating eggs, to other more complex experiments. Science experiments can be very rewarding. Have fun!

A Game of Filling Pockets

Kids like to wear clothes with pockets. They like keeping little things to play with or eat. Occasionally they are forgotten and then the clothes come out from the wash with muck in their pockets!

Memory Game by Dan Zen

Here's a good way to turn this into a game. This can be played indoors or outdoors and the number of kids can vary from 2-4. Make sure the kids are wearing clothes with the same number of pockets and more or less of the same depth.

Gather small and safe objects. Divide them into as many piles as the number of children playing. Make sure they will all fit into the players' pockets. Draw the start and end lines. Between them draw paths for the players. Now distribute the objects on these paths in a uniform fashion.

Start the race. The kids are required to pick up objects in their path and stuff it into their pockets as they move forward. The kid which pockets all objects and reaches the end line first is the winner.

This game can be played a number of times. To make it more interesting, a parent can be involved in the race. The child can pick and put it into the parent's pockets. Kids enjoy a variety of activities, and such games are always a source of fun. Trust me - this game is simple and enjoyable. Play and enjoy!

3 Tips to Keep Your Kids Safe

One of the primary responsibilities for parents is to ensure that a child has a safe and secure environment to grow up in. In caveman times parents perhaps had to keep the kids from being eaten up or being squashed under the feet of migrating animals. Yes, my imagination is on the wild side today, but it is a fact. What parents have to keep their kids safe from today is very different. We live in an urban area and our kids spend a lot of time indoors. The little time they spend outside, is under the care of teachers, babysitters or perhaps an older sibling or a family member.

Leo and GCompris again by Jaro Larnos

Whatever the fears, its the onus of the parents to prepare their kids to be safe. We need to help our kids understand what to look out for and how to keep safe. Here are three things kids must be cautioned about:

1. Playing with Electricity and Appliances
Our homes run on electricity. Shut down electricity and everything comes to a standstill. Almost. In spite of baby-proofing homes when the kids are young, we forget that tweens can get into trouble too. We do not caution our kids enough. Many a time, kids might try things without adult supervision, which might be very unsafe. There have been many mishaps with kids trying to use the food processor, just to give an example. So it's better to teach kids to handle these things safely rather than stop them from doing so, only to have them go ahead and experiment without knowing how to.

2. Being safe online
Kids might take an eggciting break from virtual pet games, but they do love spending time online. School work sometimes requires kids spending time on the Internet. Other than installing software to protect children or using Commonsense Media to decide suitability of shows and games, it's good for parents to talk to their children about the very real problems of spending time online and sharing information with strangers. It's also a good time to explain to them that long hours on the Net might not be the best thing for them(this is harder than it sounds!).

3. Being watchful when outside 
From a young age a child must know where to find a parent and the parents must be there as promised. If it's a park and your child is playing with other young children in the sandpit, it's okay to walk around the play area from where you can keep an eye on your child. At the same time it's very important to tell the child how she can find you, by walking in the opposite direction, so you can run into her. When and if she comes, you must be exactly there so that there is complete trust built into the relationship from childhood. As kids grow, ask them to be careful about walking home after dark or running across streets carelessly even in the suburbs.

Habits built in childhood last a lifetime. Let's help build them into the lives of our kids. It will serve them well as they grow and take decision on their own. They may crib and complain, but then humor can and should be used effectively to counter them. Sometimes i just say - I'm the parent and hence the Boss! You should try it.

Prevent the Summer Slide - Three Tips

Kids can grasp things quickly when taught well. If they like the subject or the teacher, the interest is all that much more. Some kids take more time to learn, and teachers put in extra effort to get them up to speed with the other kids. Teachers make a lot of difference.

Marc_dormint by Aitor Escauriaza

When summer vacation ends, kids return to school with a loss in learning. As both parents work, it does get more difficult for parents to stay home and help the kids stay on top of what they learnt the previous academic year. Many a time teachers spend an inordinately large amount of time in getting kids to recall the skills they had learnt before the vacation. Sometimes kids lose up to a month of learning in mathematics. Naturally this is an unhappy situation both for kids and the teachers. To avoid such a slide, summer school programs which were started primarily to keep kids lightly occupied in the summer are now moving towards core teaching.

Summer Camps
Summer vacation has been morphing over the last many decades. From being no vacation in the early 1800s (to facilitate planting in spring and fall) it went to being no school in the late 1800s and early 1900s (to have relaxed family vacations and a break from mental taxation). At that point summer camps came into being. They were primarily to help cultivate hobbies. It was completely non-academic and unregulated.

Today many of these summer camps are slowly adding academics. Hand in hand with this, public schools have doubled the summer camps they hold. They are including more of the core subjects. Kids who go to these summer camps, keep in touch with academics thus avoiding the summer slide.

Playing Games
Parents can help with avoiding the summer slide. Play with your kids. Spend time talking mathematics. Read to them. Read plays or books where there are many characters whose parts can be read by each one participating. Most of the slide is noticed in math and reading. Make a little effort to help your kids. It can be fun. One fun way could also be playing educational math games with your kids. Get the kids to do some math or reading worksheets through the summer. Play board games which require math and reading.

Fun yet educational trips
Sometimes kids need to learn outside their usual classroom. One of the easiest places to take them to is a good museum. For bright minds, there are few things which are better. Even better enroll them into a summer program at a museum close to your place. If you have easy access to a national park, make a trip. Stay a day or two. Let the kids see first hand all that they study about in class. Land forms, vegetation and biological systems. If you have a mathematics exhibit locally, take the kids.

Parents can help prevent the summer slide. It requires some patience and imagination. Childhood flashes by very quickly. Before we know it the kids are all grown up and gone. Summer months are the best months to interact with the kids and stop the summer slide. 

Playing versus Watching others Play

Games are not what they used to be. Play is fun and the easiest way to learn something. As we watch kids play, they are actively learning a zillion things, but we only notice them playing. In the interaction naturally built into play, kids learn cooperation, fairness, give and take, competition, handling loss, reading emotion and a long list of things we might not even know about.

Star Wars Trilogy Video Game by Anthony Crider

A big part of playing, be it a spectator sport, a video game or just a game on the street, is watching others play. We watch better players to learn from their game. Occasionally we watch players of a lesser caliber to have some fun or to teach them to play better. There is also a rush in watching a competitive game. Spectators can take sides and root for their teams. Games can also be used to familiarize kids with computers via play.

Watching others play has always existed, but watching an e-league is definitely a big change. It means big money is being poured in. Let's Play videos exist and a huge following has been built up over the past few years. Just like other games, kids learn while watching others play video games. One thing parents need to make sure is that kids are watching age appropriate videos and that they don't get addicted to violence and bad language. One way to ensure this by joining them while they watch. Go on, have some fun!

Activities for this Earth Day

April 22, 1970 was a remarkable day.

From the West Coast to the East, people of all ages stepped out of their comfort zones and participated in rallies and protests bringing environmental degradation center stage. Americans tired of polluting factories, untreated sewage flowing into water bodies, oil spills, uncontrolled usage of pesticides, toxic dumps, garbage patches, shrinking green spaces, extinction of wildlife and a whole other bunch of issues decided to do something about it. That day saw an unusual coming together of people - of all ages, hues, political beliefs, backgrounds - and this resulted in the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In 1990 this movement went global as 200 million people participated world wide!

Earth Day by Christopher Michel

Ideally everyday ought to be Earth Day, but the way our lives are structured, we do not live lives which are environmentally friendly. The goal is to live a sustainable life on earth. The need of the hour is to educate our kids about living a sustainable life. Towards this end, here are three activities for kids:

1. Encourage them to spread the message

With schools having a strong curriculum which includes environmental education, kids are ideal spokespeople to go out into the community to spread the message of living a sustainable life. People need to know the consequences of their actions. If kids are the kind to play kid games, encourage them to play more games built around the environment. This will help them learn about the environment in a fun way. 

2. Ask them to adopt a simple habit

Sit together as a family and see if you can change something small which will make your life more environmentally friendly. Perhaps kids can carry a bag when they help out in the shopping or maybe, they will switch off lights as they exit their rooms. Alternatively they could decline the plastic cutlery and tissue sent with home delivered food. 

3. Make recyclable gifts

A good way for kids to understand recycling is to make something out of recycled material. Just a few decades ago this was not uncommon. But today it has to be taught because our lifestyles have changed drastically. You could use old beads to make a new neckpiece, use old paper to make a papier mache mask, use old plastic containers as pots for gifting plants or make new things out of old clothes. 

This Earth Day try to make a difference. It's easy and simple. Our planet sustains us, let us help by living a sustainable life. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. 

Take an Eggciting break from Online Games!

Not so fun fact of life: video games can be addictive. It would be real sad to have a kid at home who goes from enjoying simple online games to getting addicted to them. Such things are insidious and need to be caught on time. While parents are feeling happy that the kids are enjoying educational content, it might just be yet another step to addiction. 

fun 32 by Yana Sedlak

A simple way to avoid walking down such paths is to create a balance. A good balance between video games and other activities. Though video games are all about immersive experiences, there is nothing more immersive than real life. Kids need to be alive to things in real life. One of the best ways to do this is via play and activities. Outdoors play is very important for kids, but sometimes kids need to enjoy some indoor activities. With Easter Sunday around the corner, here are 3 activities involving eggs and just playing together:

1. Rubberize an Egg

This is by far one of the coolest experiments I have ever seen. All you need is a real egg, half a glass of vinegar and some food coloring(optional). Put the egg in half a glass of vinegar. Leave it untouched for three days, and voilà you have yourself a rubberized egg! 

Handle it gently, even if it feels nice and rubbery, for inside the skin, the rubberized egg is still and egg!

2. How many eggs can you carry?

This one definitely needs wooden or plastic eggs. They need to be unbreakable. For every person playing you need about 6 eggs. Sit around in a circle. Take turns to tuck an egg into the crook of your elbow or under your armpit to start with. None in your pockets or palms. As the game continues from player to player, keep increasing the number of eggs you can tuck into various spots on your body. The winner is one who can tuck away the maximum number of eggs!

3. Egg-spotting

You just need and egg and a limited space, as in a smallish room. Players take time to hide the egg and the rest of the players have to spot it. The player who has hidden it, needs to call out how close or far the rest are from the egg. As they get closer, the player needs to say they are getting warm. When they are real far away, it's cold or ice-cold. If players are just a whisker away from the egg, well, they are red -hot. This involves lots of shouting and fun - enjoy!

4. Make Bath Bombs

This is one of my favorite activities. Simple and fun to make it, but even more fun to see them when popped into water. All you need is 2 measures of bicarbonate of soda, 1 measure of citric acid, 10 drops of food coloring and a teaspoon full of olive oil for binding. Mix it all in thoroughly and fill the egg molds. You could leave it out for 24 hrs or pop them into the freezer until they are frozen. Get them out and pop them into a bowl of water to see the bomb's effect. 

Well, Easter's around the corner. Enjoy the activities and have a Happy Easter!

5 Activities from the Natural World for Kids

In this digital age, digital devices are used by parents and teachers to interact with kids. There's the ubiquitous phone, TV, computer, gaming console etc. Occasionally it is good to interact with kids, without digital bridges. Parents must give kids their full attention, especially in the younger years, when kids keep looking towards the parent for assurance and comfort. It is a fact, that kids react to the voice of their mother even before they are born, so where is the surprise in mothers and fathers playing important roles in the formative years of their kids!

Image Credit: Javierosh

When parents are busy, especially if they are working parents, it is easy to put educational preschool games in the hands of a child and feel less guilty about not spending time or playing, with the child. These games are good for the child, but they cannot replace the good that comes from interacting with a child.

Here are 5 activities for interacting with your child in the natural world:

1. Play Imaginary Games
Playing imaginary games and building an elaborate imaginary world with characters and other details is not a sign of troubled child. It is just fertile imagination. In fact 'paracosm' is the word which describes this imaginary world with it's own entities, geography and other details. Some of these imaginary worlds persist in an adult's world too. Research shows that older children, single children and children who don't watch much TV, create such worlds. Research suggests that it could be because they have the opportunity. Such imagination requires unstructured time. Here is a list of imaginative play.

2. Go on a Nature Walk
Right from when a child is young, it is imperative for a child to understand that humans are a part of Nature around us. We are like a puzzle piece in an evolving puzzle. Taking a child out into Nature is a good beginning. Growing this into a Nature walk is a simple and fun activity. Recognizing elements  - stones, trees, rivers, lakes, birds, animals - of the world we live in a very important part of a child's life. There must be a sense of belonging in the outdoors. If it's raining, then there's always some indoor activities for a rainy day.

3. Build something 
There's just something about building stuff, that can be engrossing. Just piling up blocks or pillows are great activities for little kids, but using sand, mud, snow, sticks etc. is much more fun. As they grow, it is amazing to see their imagination flower. One of the simplest activities is to get cartons and let a child lose on them. They can stack them, crawl into them, sit inside/on them, carry them over their heads, pile things into them, the exploration can be endless.This is great for a rainy day, but when the weather is good, head out.

4. Go shopping for food
Food is crucial to a human's survival. We eat to live, although there are many who live to eat!
Shopping for food is a fascinating activity for younger kids. They can explore color, texture, words, communication with people at the store via shopping. In fact as they age, they can learn responsibility by shopping for the family from a certain section, while the adult wraps up shopping in another section. Kids feel they are contributing, even as they learn to identify things, understand expiry dates, weight, good quality, ingredients which go into a particular dish etc.

5. Involve the child in simple chores
Living within a family is all about co-operative living. The give and take, wheeling and dealing, empathy for family members, responsibility etc., all this is absorbed by a child even as they do simple chores. As long as the chore is not harmful, a child can do it. Parents have to consciously create small chores for kids, slowly growing them as the child grows up and it's abilities improve. It is also a good way to build family relationships.

So here are 5 ways you can interact with your kids, in the Natural World. This is the world we belong to, and it is imperative that they understand what they are a part of.