Kid Craft :: Make Your Own Bored Game

I haven't posted a Kid Craft in ages and thought it was about time since my garden is on a hiatus right now. I prefer to tell people that my garden is on sabbatical to make it sound more impressive, but I know no one's buying it. I'll admit that I don't post kid crafts that often because I don't think my average reader comes here for that - I think most people come to this blog for my dyn-o-mite gardening skills - snicker, snicker, snicker.

I thought I'd put my gardening prowess to one side today and show off a kid craft that actually turned out great. The boys and I made this game at the end of the summer, when the long, hot days were dragging and I needed something creative to occupy them one morning. I'll start by saying that one of the fun things about having more than one child is that the chances of them liking the same thing at the same time are about nil. So one will like Star Wars while the other likes Indiana Jones. This led me to the game that killed the end of summer boredom blues for our family. It was a full-out life saver.

It was simple. I sat down with the boys with some pieces of paper and let them draw out some ideas for the game. Of course the ideas were awesome things like "Battle Darth Vader" and "Swing on a rope with Indiana Jones" and "Fight a monster with Scooby Doo" - all things that seemed impossible to integrate into one board game.

But then I had a eureka moment. Yes, we'd integrate all the ideas the boys had into the biggest mish-mosh of junk you've ever seen and everyone would be happy. This is something you would never be able to find in a store. It would be awesome.

I got a piece of poster board and a sharpie and drew out a long snaking trail for the game. I separated the trail into typical game board squares and gave the boys a box of crayons and let them color in the squares. We also made bridges (or the requested "shortcuts") that would allow a player to battle the bad guy of their choice, so they colored those in too. This whole process was quite time consuming for them, which I thoroughly enjoyed. That's not wrong, is it?


Then we went online to Google image search and printed out a handful of pictures of their favorite characters that we cut out and glued down on the game board in the appropriate places. We've got scenes from The Last Airbender, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Scooby Doo etc.

We used an oversized die from another board game and players can choose their own "guys" each time they play. We've used full-sized GI Joes and Star Wars figures, lego guys, army men, batmen and even a dirty sock once. Whatever tickles their fancy for the moment is their guy, which really does add to the fun of it.


My boys like twists in games so we made up a stack of game cards by making a bunch of simple text boxes in MS Word and writing appropriate game card lingo on each one. They all correspond to the characters on the board and some are just downright silly - "Sing your favorite song or go back 2 spaces" for example (I should note that my youngest son pulls that card, growls, and then moves back 2 spaces every time). I sat there on the computer and let both boys come up with ideas for an equal number of cards. We have some that move you forward (Yoda helped you. Forward 3 spaces you go); some that hurt you (You tripped on Indiana Jones' whip. Go back one space); and some that challenge you (A T-Rex is chasing you. Roll higher than a 3 to escape or go back 5 spaces). We made 20 cards and printed them out on card stock and cut them out. We also drew two rectangles on the board for 'cards" and "used cards" so they had a home while we were playing.


We then put numbers on all the bridges. When you reach a gateway to the bridge (a square marked with an X), you must roll the die and if you get the number on the bridge or higher, you can cross it. If not, you stay where you are (although one of the bridges where you battle the Emperor from Star Wars says right on the board that if you don’t roll the right number, you lose a turn).


We put star stickers throughout the game on random squares. If you land on a star sticker you draw a card and do what the card says.


If you land on a square with another player you have to battle the other player. Can you tell I have boys? This was their idea and their favorite part of the game. When another player lands on a spot that's already occupied, both players roll the die. The person who rolls the lower number moves backward that number of spaces. So if one person rolls a 4 and one person rolls a 2, the person with the 4 stays put and the person with the 2 goes back 2 spaces. And if you're really lucky you'll land on a bridge and get to roll to cross the bridge or land on a star sticker and draw a card. It's all very exciting.


I'm very surprised that we made this game in August to get us through a long summer day and here we are in October and the boys still enjoy playing this game almost daily. Since it's won the test of time at our house I thought I'd post it here incase another parent needs a basically free craft to entertain the kids. I am really amazed that they're still as excited to play this as they were the day we made it. You can customize it to whatever your children are interested in and you can put many different characters on the board to please multiple kids.

It's the best board game for killing the boredom around our house now… I'll admit that making a Halloween one with black and orange squares and Halloween characters sounds appealing and making a Christmas one with red, green and white squares and completing Christmas challenges also will be on the to-do list for the holidays. Who knew that a 59 cent piece of poster board could be so much fun?

Kid Craft :: Shadow Puppets

I know my regular gardening readers probably recoil at my kid craft posts, but I'm a full-time mom and part-time gardener, so most of my day is spent trying to occupy two little boys without relying solely on SpongeBob and Scooby Doo. Trying to come up with something creative every single day of the week isn't an easy task, but every now and then we find something that's a real hit. This activity was such a hit that I had to share it incase another mom needed something cheap and easy to do with her kids.

I've always like the idea of shadow puppets, but wasn't sure we could pull it off. It turns out you need no skills whatsoever and it doesn't cost anything so we gathered the essential equipment:

Wooden sticks (we used bamboo skewers from the kitchen)
Black construction paper
Tape
Scissors
Freezer paper
Lamp
(Optional: laminator)

To get the ball rolling I sat up one night scouring the web for photos of a house, a wolf and some pigs. I found the pictures and printed them out. Then I cut them out and traced around the shape onto black construction paper. Next I cut them out and laminated them. Finally I taped a bamboo skewer to the back of each one, after I cut off the pointy part of the skewer. The boys are very familiar with the Three Little Pigs story so I knew they'd jump at the chance to act it out.


We got two barstools and stretched out a piece of freezer paper in between the stools and taped it in place. We put a halogen desk lamp behind the stools and turned off the lights in the room. We started with me telling the story of the Three Little Pigs and the boys watching, but I wasn’t able to finish the story without the boys begging to tell their own version. They had such a great time acting it out and changing up the story.


Then they decided that making their own shadow puppets would lead to much better stories. The boys got black construction paper and a white crayon and drew their own puppets. With some creative cutting out by me, we ended up with a dinosaur, two monsters, a boy and a boat.


These puppets along with the Three Little Pig puppets led to some hilarious stories. The boys were literally crying they were laughing so hard at their own insane stories. We had monsters knocking on the houses, dinosaurs eating pigs, a boy riding on the wolf's back… and the boys just couldn't get enough. They actually played with these puppets for almost two hours. They are 3 and 5 years old and I said close to TWO hours.


I didn't laminate the boys puppets because they wanted to use them right away and had no patience for the laminator. Even though they were just construction paper taped to a bamboo skewer, they held up just fine without any rips, so clearly a laminator isn't necessary.



This was one of the best activities we've ever done together. Their imaginations were in overdrive and it didn't cost a penny. If you wanted to make it gardening related, you could always cut out Jack and the Beanstalk for your kids to act out in their shadow puppet theatre.

Later, Gator

When you live in an area for a long time you take for granted all the typical things that make your area unique. Tourists visit Florida and are in awe of the palm trees and white sandy beaches. They get fired up over alligators and dolphins and manatees, but when you live here, you take them all in stride. But today we decided to get out of the house and let the boys get close up and personal to one of the Florida creatures that we normally tell them to avoid like their life depends on it - which it does. The Florida Alligator.

We took the boys to Gatorland, which is Central Florida's oldest theme park. It was built in 1949, long before Disney and Universal, and is still owned by the grandchildren of the original founders. It's a 110-acre theme park and wildlife preserve and is known as the Alligator Capital of the World.

Our first stop was the Alligator Wrestling show where two guys dressed like Steve Irwin, but with pants and whips, pull a four to five foot gator out of a pit onto a sand platform and perform various stunts with him. They crack the whip and tell you that the crack of the whip is why natural-born Floridians are called Florida crackers. Florida used to be the second largest cattle-producing state in the U.S. and they'd crack the whips to get the cattle moving. Alligator wrestling started when alligators would pick off cattle and ranchers would hire wrestlers to catch the gators and move them away from their precious herds. We saw all the good tricks: jumping on the gator's back, holding his mouth open and laying him on his back to put him to sleep.
Then we went to the Alligator Jumparoo, which is a crowd favorite, but not quite as exciting in the cooler weather. Since alligators are cold-blooded and it was in the low 60s today, they were doing what we were doing - looking for a sunny spot and trying to get warm. You can tell that jumping up for a piece of chicken wasn't as exciting in that cold water, but one alligator was up for the challenge, so we got a photo op and the boys found it exciting.

Gatorland also has the world's largest collection of albino alligators. I'm convinced they aren't true albinos though, since they have blue eyes and not pink. I'll have to look into that. I quite enjoyed seeing a gardener being led into one of the albino alligator enclosures with one of the alligator wranglers. He was picking out weeds from the plant beds, but started moving like Flash Gordon when the big white gator started hissing and baring his teeth. We all got a good giggle out of that one.

A highlight of the trip was when the boys got to eat alligator meat for lunch. You can choose alligator bites, alligator ribs or a combo of both. We chose the bites because we've eaten them before and they're not too messy. Both boys were very intrigued and enjoyed eating the alligator. People always ask what gator tastes like - of course it tastes like chicken, but I'd describe it as a tough chicken with a little bit of a fishy vibe to it - almost like if you mixed shark and chicken together. Doesn't sound appealing, but it's not bad at all.

A highlight for me was seeing the big bull gators performing their impressive bellowing behavior. They do it to attract females and show other males how imposing they are. You really have to see it to believe it. They fill their chests with air and raise up out of the water. Their heads point upward and the bellowing is so intense that the water on the gators back literally jumps up and down like a tiny dancing water show. If you ever hear that noise and you're near a lake in Florida, it's a very good time to run. Fast.

It was just an all-around good day out. We all needed to get out of the house together as a family and the boys really seemed to soak it all in. If you ever come to Central Florida and want a break from the commercialism of Disney World, give Gatorland a visit.

To make it a learning experience we're bringing out Suzanne Tate's book "Izzy Lizzy Alligator" from her Nature Series. We have quite a few of her books and we love them. They're simply written and illustrated and all have a great message. Izzy Lizzy Alligator follows the story of a mother alligator and how pollution affects her hatchlings. I know the boys see this book in a different light after visiting real live alligators at Gatorland.