Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Play With Words, Not Matches


Still searching for a few minutes to burrow away and write,
I set up two games for today's quiet time.


Here is Mixed Up Many:


We drew pictures of people,















cut each paper into tops, 
middles and bottoms,



punched holes 
and snapped them together 
with binder rings
on cardboard. 



Voila! 


To my writing friends:  


Surely this is a plot recipe
just drooling to be used.

Scribble story bones onto paper,
clip into rings,
mix till ready,
serve!


The next game is Play With Words, Not Matches:















This is great for rainy days 
and Mama-is-desperate-to-write moments.

I hunted through the house 
for treasures,
scooped everything into a basket,
then wrote each word on 
recycled art cards. 

 
  













The girls had to draw a card, read the word 
and tape it to its match.
















Their favorite part: the tape. 

So simple, yet so entertaining!


For my writer and artist friends:

This can be converted to Kim's Game,
from Rudyard Kipling's Kim.

Have someone fill a tray or basket with dissimilar treasures.
(My kid "helpers" do this for me all day long without being asked.)

Study the tray for twenty seconds, then whisk it away.
Try to remember each thing and its placement on the tray.
This is great for sharpening your detail memory.



They're now playing dollhouse with the boots.

And my writing moments?
I had so much fun playing games
I forgot to write.

Photobucket

4 comments:

Jan Morrison said...

oh you are my favourite sort of mum! Lucky kids - lucky you to play with such fine friends.

Richard Jesse Watson said...

I'm pretty sure that's how War and Peace was written. Leo threw things in a potchka and then taped them together, and Voilá!

Molly/Cece said...

I liked the notebook with mix and match body parts. Fun. Fun. I like that stick the name tag on the thing game. Add in foreign languages for extra fun!

My favorite games? 1. Gnome Homes. We were the urban planning division for the Gnome community for a while. Uh, the classic STORE was tons of fun. I also really liked Boards and Nails, wherein we hammered nails into boards and sometimes made furniture.

Faith Pray said...

Jan, your marble bowl stays fresh in my mind. I love that we play word games together even though we don't live on the same island.

Richard, absolutna! I can just imagine Tolstoy shuffling his ideas. It must have been a really thick potchka, and a lifetime of tape.

Molly, thank you for the Gnome and Nails ideas! They are brilliant. As soon as the kids reach that age where they can be trusted with some inattention by me, we will pull out the hammer and nails with a flourish!

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