Hobbies And Interests
Caber Toss
A truly Celtic event, the caber toss, involves flipping a long cylindrical piece of wood (the caber) and having it accurately land pointing away from you. This is thought to originate from the need to toss trees over rivers so that people on the other side could cross.
Start with a light piece of wood for your child, less than 20 lbs or so. Explain to them that the object is to make the caber end up at 12 o'clock while they are at 6 o'clock, or you can draw the line. Get a larger caber for yourself and compete against your child; the winner is the one with the caber closest to 12 o'clock.
Celtic Slang
Teaching your children Celtic slang from Ireland, Wales and Scotland can be a lot of fun as it will sound especially silly to younger children. There are many different ways you can base a game around this. You can rip up little pieces of paper with the Celtic sayings on it and have the kids attempt to guess the meaning of the phrase. For example, a piece of paper could say, "pull your socks up" and the kids could all work together to come up with the meaning (which is "get to work").
Make it part of a relay, where two teams of kids compete: each child answers a slang question and then shoots a basketball into a hoop or a quarter into a trashcan. The team that finishes first wins. A follow-up game can involve your kids doing a little scene using all the sayings that they can remember.
Create a Tale
Read your children several Celtic tales of fairies and warriors. Then have your children create their own Celtic tale using ideas from the stories. Everyone will stand in a circle and each of your kids will contribute one sentence to the story. Ask them to create an elaborate story where lots of things happen. The stories will get wilder and wilder as each child adds to it, and when it seems the story has reached its conclusion, you can have them start another one. Record the audio or video of the game if you wish them to have a record for later.
Celtic History Jeopardy
Teach your children about the history of the Celtic nation by putting together a Celtic History Jeopardy game. You can do this on the computer or make it with a piece of poster board. Make three to five rows of categories with several questions that have ascending money values underneath. The winning team or child wins a prize of your choosing. Change the difficulty of questions based on the age group playing. Some categories could include Celtic history or Celtic geography. One Celtic geography question could be, what are three countries that Celtic people come from?
Online Games
There are many online resources available to play Celtic games or to learn more about Celtic history. The BBC Wales website has an interactive game with different activities about the Celtic nations. There are multiple strategy and adventure games available that relate to Celtic mythology as well.