Hobbies And Interests
Seeing and Remembering
Seeing and Remembering is a very simple game that will amuse and occupy kids of almost any age. Without your child around, gather objects from around the house until you have 15 or 20 different things. If your child is younger and cannot write yet, use five or 10 items instead. Place all the items on a table or floor and cover with any type of cloth. Remove the cloth long enough for your child to view the items for about ten seconds. Replace the cloth and ask your child to write down or tell you as many of the items as they can remember. If you are playing with multiple children, the child who remembers the most items is the winner.
Kitchen Music
Playing a kitchen music game is best for keeping younger children occupied but it will also interest some older children as well. Find three 2-liter bottles and remove the tops before taping them together to form a triangle. Pour a halfinch of water in one, 2 inches of water in another and 4 inches of water in the third. Place the triangle of bottles on the floor or a low table and let your child blow over the tops of the bottles. Each bottle will have its own tone, depending on the level of water it contains. Let younger children create their own music with the bottles, or let the older ones experiment with different levels of water to find other tones.
Sardines
Sardines is a reverse take on hide and seek. Gather a group of children and select one to be the hider. All of the other children will need to hide their eyes and count to 20 or higher to give the hider time to disappear. Once he is hidden, all the other children hunt for the hider. When one child finds the hider, he should join her in the hiding place rather than pointing it out to the other children. The game continues until all the children are packed into the hiding place like sardines. The first child that finds the hider gets to hide the next time.