Bloggy Friends, I need ideas. I'm writing a piece for a local magazine on entertaining your kids during a power outage (power cut). So if anyone has a bright idea, or a link to a parents' website which covers this, then let me know. Please think a little beyond books, colouring books, pen and paper games, card games and charades - I've got those already.
I have very happy memories of power cuts in the '70s. My memory is a bit hazy, but I seem to recall my mother used to let us sit at the kitchen table and play with the candles - dripping wax onto plates, letting it cool, scraping it off and putting it back on top of the candle. Hours of fun, but I don't think I can responsibly recommend it, given that I have just read that more than 140 people die each year from candle-related home fires, according to the National Fire Protection Agency (they recommend flashlights in preference to candles as an emergency source of light).
Your fun ideas in the comments box, please.
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How about the salt dough stuff? You know, it's like play dough but you make it yourself. Hours of fun making seasonal decorations to be baked in the oven (when the power comes back on eventually), painted, and used to decorate Christmas trees, for example. The only problem with that is they are usually too heavy for the tree and fall off repeatedly - though that may have been just me...
ReplyDeleteOr, get the kids to put on a Wayang Gulit show (think that's the spelling). Cut out silhouette characters from card, attach them to sticks, get a large piece of tracing / thin paper, set up a bright torch behind the paper and they use the shadows to tell the story. Clear as mud?
We used to do shadow (finger) puppets on the wall which was great fun. Also played hide and seek which was very funny when you didn't even have to hide to be hidden.
ReplyDeleteWe (not far away from Chateau Iota) had natural gas so had supper during power cuts.
ReplyDeleteLove
Josephine
xxx
We also used to do the shadow hand images too. Playing sardines is really fun, although really little ones might get a bit scared. It's just like hide and seek, only when you find the person who's hiding, you have to hide in the same place with them.
ReplyDeleteMaking dens out of blankets and cushions was also popular.
We have power cuts several times a week,so I should be a mine of information on this one. Sadly not, but I do know how to moan about it very effectively. If it's in the evening I get the children to have their bath, (assuming teh water's already heated up)and encourage a long one, putting on swimming goggles, having water fights etc. And bathing by candle light should pass the health and safety regs (plenty of 'extinguishing' resources to hand)
ReplyDeleteHere are some rainy day activities http://familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts/season/specialfeature/spring-rainy-day-activities-ms/
ReplyDeleteAlso, how about I'm going on a camping trip and I'm going to take...http://www.gameskidsplay.net/games/mental_games/camping_trip.htm
how about going out for a walk if it's during the day or go in the early evening with flashlights.
ReplyDeleteif it's not too cold outside how about a campfire and roasting marshmallows. introduce the neighborhood to your british tradition of guy fawkes bonfire night!!!
for indoors - sitting around and telling ghost stories or giving the flashlight to one person and they read aloud from a great novel.
When I was kid, power cuts, which always seemed to happen when it was dark, meant Monopoly by kerosene (paraffin) lamps.
ReplyDeleteJust send them to bed early and be done with it LOL
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How about a sing song, my kids love that, cheesy I know but it keeps spirits up. Sardines is good too.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it depends if you have torches/candles or not. There's always the alphabet games, you know, animals , colours, fruit and veg beginning with each letter, or, 'I went to the shop and I bought a...' and keep adding things on.
We used to sing as first resort, and then play imaginary something as second. The whole play-acting while listening to the radio for actual updates on the tornadoes checkers my youth.
ReplyDeleteI feel a kind of expert on this after Ike. After no electricity for 2 weeks. After about day 3 the card games get old. You don't want to do shadow puppets because you don't want to waste the flash lights and you are starting to get really tired of the sight of each other.
ReplyDeleteThere were a lot of walks to no where. We couldn't play in the park because of all the damage to the trees, the county roped it off. So kids played baseball in the parking lots. Rode bikes. Drew hopsotch boards. We all so did a lot of painting. It was close to halloween so we made up some decorations.
For those times when the kids got tired of doing and just wanted to sit and watch TV we read to each other.
Oh, and then there were the Nintendo DSs. Easy to carry around and can be charged in the car.
I guess it depends on what time of day it happens. If it's at night..bedtime. But if it's normal "waking hours", almost all normal activities continue (without electronic devices). But, at night, we used to tell stories or read aloud via torch (flash) light. And, sometimes it was a real adventure just getting food on the table so everything took longer...filling up your time. I'm so glad to find you. I was the Ex-Pat in Scotland (Glasgow) so I can identify with your situation!
ReplyDeleteScary or semi-scary stories, with a flashlight/torch shining upward from under the chin of the story-teller? Worked for me, when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteChinese whispers? (is that the PC term these days?) wasn't there some game with squeezing hands??? ha, what about blind man's buff?!
ReplyDeletei'm not helping am i?
Pigx
During power cuts we used to play We're Going On a Bear Hunt in the house. We'd make a den to pretend was the bear's lair and then all scramble upstairs onto the bed to 'escape' the bear which was usually daddy with a towel on his head!
ReplyDeleteAlso, my kids love if they lie down and you draw around their whole body on a giant piece of paper (those big rolls you get for chalk boards) and then they colour it in to be whatever they want to be when they grow up (ballerina, spaceman, footballer, etc)
Plot, script and produce a play?
ReplyDeleteI know I'm late on this and you've probably written the article several times over by now but we used to play murder in the dark which was terribly exciting and is probably now considered politically incorrect but it was great fun. I can let you know how, if you haven't gone to press!
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