Some Old Fashioned Fun Activities
For You And Your Family
The best way to get your children and family involved is to
have a plan. This is where you will find activities for the body and mind.
For The Body
Don't forgot Ball Games, such as kick ball, soccer, baseball,
football and basketball. This is not only fun for all, but great exercise
and a great way for your children to learn to work as a team.
Yoga Day is an excellent way for the kids and you to have a blast.
Not only great physically, but also mentally. Get your mats and DVDs ready.
You can make up your own activities, by having a Saturday afternoon
picnic and bike ride or walk. Make the food for the picnic a joint activity
with everyone helping to select the picnic food, make it up and pack it up.
Have everyone select a picnic spot and then put the places in a hat and pick
one of them out. The spot must be in walking or biking distance and the
person whose spot
gets picked gets to carry the basket with the food.
The Food Game is
a great creative nutrition game. You can visit a local dairy and see
how things work.
Be sure during and after your visit, you get a chance to talk about the
foods and drinks that are good for them. Then to see what they learned play
the Food Game.
You would get foods and
drinks that are good for them such as: milk, water, apples, oranges,
bananas; zucchini; pork chops, chicken, beef, to name a few and then foods
that aren’t like cupcakes, cakes, potato chips, dips, to name a few and have
them put them in separate buckets. You would have a bucket for good for you
and a bucket for not good for you. Each child would pick up a good food and
a not so good food and put them in their respective buckets. After the foods
and drinks are separated you could talk about why some foods are better than others.
Obviously the level of your talk is going to differ depending on the age of
your children.
Another great way to get
physical and creative at the same time is to have the children pick their
Favorite Song
and then have them act out
the song. This allows for arm, leg, and body movements, in addition to story
telling at the same time. You can make this a Charades Game by doing this
same game and have the other children guess the story.
For The Mind
Another fun game is
Treasure Hunt.
You can set up a sand box, and place gold and silver pieces (things made
with these items, like rings, watches, necklaces) for the children to find.
You could put an old watch in there and when they find it, watch the video
on how the watch works in the
Vintage How The Eye, Ear,
Watch & Telephone Works Works Series.
After all the items are
found you can read a book on the Gold Rush and Silver Mining. You want to
focus on working together. One holds the bucket and the other the sifter.
You can add a math element by asking them to count the number of items they
found. In addition, by reading books on the Gold Rush and Silver Mining they
are also gaining knowledge. Again, the books and the game would be
determined by the age of your children.
Science Day is a great way for you to talk about how certain parts
of their body works, like the ears and eyes, how their hair grows, why some
people are tall and some are short. These classic vintage videos on how the
ear works and how the eye works, can be found in
the Vintage How The Eye, Ear, Watch & Telephone Works Works Series,
and Adventures in
Research. Check back often as we will be adding some more old time radio shows that will explore a
variety of science topics.
Art Day, is the day to pull out the finger paints, coloring books,
painting, pencil by numbers
and let the your children be creative. For those of you
with infants and toddlers, you can still do the painting, only with pudding
and Jell-O.
Let's Pretend playtime can cover a myriad of different things.
Like let's pretend the telephone rings, how would you answer it, let's
pretend the door bell rings, what would you do. Let's Pretend is a great way
to teach your children manners. How you want them to act in different
situations. Play out lots of pretending scenarios that highlight how
children should behave. Check out our Social Behavior and Etiquette
Collection, Volume One on Courtesy & Responsibility and
Volume 2 on
Good School Behavior.
Career Day, could be what do you want to be when you grow up and have
them act out the day. For those children who want to be Fireman, be sure to
check out
Fire Fighters Old Time Radio
Children's Series.
One of my favorite's is Animal Day. It is a fun day that
combines books about animals and movies. Some great vintage movies are
included in the Kids Will Love Vintage Puppies, Kittens, Rabbits & More which talk about the role animals play and their
contributions. One of which follows
Billie the Buffalo after he is born and how he fits in with the rest of the
Buffaloes. The classic Aesop's fable with farm animals,
The Hare and the Tortoise, that includes an owl, a fox,
a goose, a rooster, a raccoon and a hare. All of these great videos
can be found in the Kids Will Love Vintage Puppies, Kittens, Rabbits &
More.
Two of my favorites are the Mother Mack movies, in which she trains her
seven puppies and the other where they find happy homes. I love both
of these as they also show children how to behave around animals, along with
many other good lessons. And, of course, we have to have a video on
cats, which is a story of three kittens from
the time they are born until they are old enough to work on the farm. Again,
all of these great videos can be found in the
Kids Will Love Vintage
Puppies, Kittens, Rabbits & More.
History Day can cover a bunch of different areas. Again your
children learn how things were before and today. Be sure to check the
DVD page often for new DVD releases on when
life was simpler.
Role Play - Get out the dolls and see how your children think a
girl and guy should behave. By watching their
doll play
you can get great
insights into how they feel about you, and your spouse and their brothers
and sisters. In addition to lots of fun in using their imagination. Believe
me it will bring lots of fun memories for you also.
I can remember my sister and I having hours of fun playing with our
dolls.
