I suppose, to a certain degree, I am old school. We have over complicated things in a big way. Take Facebook for example. I was having a conversation with my daughters last night and I said, you are not going to have Instagram, Twitter, FB or anything else for a long time. Here is the reason why, if you are not on there, you can’t be bothered with the mess that’s there. It simply doesn’t apply to you. No liking photos, no bullying messages, etc. All the stuff that’s out there designed to be anonymous like that Kik messenger. I know parents who let their kids do these things without even understanding that some random old dude can be sending nasty messages to their young kids. Like Snapchat or Vine. And then I found this article explaining more…I didn’t even know about!!! 7 dangerous Apps that parents need to know about
What happened to go out and PLAY??? Is anyone else wondering about that? I mean let’s think about this, what did we have to be afraid of? I guess plenty, but they couldn’t find us anywhere at anytime and talk to us through devices. That’s just plain creepy. So here are some alternatives if you are wondering what we do ova here and how we survive. Hahaha. Okay, but seriously. I was telling another mom yesterday about this life-saving pin I found a few years ago. Seriously. Then it occurred to me that I should pass it on. All it was, get ready for this, was making Barbie clothes out of unmatched socks!!! It was like genius. It saved my kids from boredom and they got back into Barbies by designing clothes all the time. Of course my table downstairs is covered in glitter glue, sequins, and Project Runway reject parts, but hey, I don’t really go down there anyway. It’s the kids craft area for a reason.
We did actually loom potholders y’all…for a while. That was a thing I brought back from my childhood. Of course, we have moved onto those crazy loop and loom bracelets. So we have a variety of craft materials available at any time, but I also got into this saving toilet paper rolls for a while thing. I don’t know why, but we go through, ahem, tons of TP. I don’t have like tons of ideas over here, ok, but here is my board: Kids Crafts on Pinterest You can find me over there. Because I am not a mommy blogger per say, I tend to pin things I use that might interest my readers. I have more recipes than anything else…and geeky things.
Bored games. I mean board games are also used occasionally. What can I say, I remember them being more fun. DARK TOWER was revolutionary back in the day. And scary. Look what I found to show you!! How to Play Dark Tower. Oh. My. Gosh. That sound would give me nightmares. I remember trying to go into ruins…the creaky door. The brigands. Why was I scared?? This game was so awesome. Watching the little demo doesn’t do it justice. Sigh. I am not old. I am vintage. Who made that a thing? Vintage. So we ummm have this game still. Plus another one from my husband’s childhood that I had never heard of. It’s called Stop Thief. I am linking you to E-Bay if you want to check this out. Mind you, we have it and the girls love it. They have been playing it for a few years…so ages 10 and up are fine.
Card games are also fun over here. One the kids like is called Gubs, and they even get their grandfather to play. We have the other one mentioned in this link called Sleeping Queens too. They can play these with little to no arguing. So mother approved. Of course, we have good ole’ Uno. You have to have that somewhere. If you don’t, go get it. It’s still a fun one to play even though we only had one version and there are so many out there now it’s not funny.
What I would love to see is that parents are teaching their children how to interact with other children face to face. Using a variety of games to also teach rules such as taking turns, sharing, you don’t always get your way, and don’t be a sore loser. These are real life skills…I know, I was a teacher. You could tell the children who had interaction with games, either video or “old school”, because they were patient when I told them how to play the learning games. When they picked up the skill, they could in turn teach others to play the game at the table. The children who lost and cried, gave up, got mad, or snatched game pieces away were really, quite frankly, used to getting their way. That does not happen out in the real world. Oh man, you cried after they fired you and you got your job back plus a raise? Awesome. Or you learned strategy by playing games…you learn to wait for the other players move. Sometimes, it took a completely blank face to wait it out, but it worked. So I know it’s “Motivational Monday” over here on the blog, but I hope this helped some folks with ideas for the holidays.
