Daily Idea #345: Barrel of Monkeys

Who doesn’t love the game “Barrel of Monkeys”? Trying to get those little monkeys to hang from each other’s tails is difficult yet so much fun. As I was researching for today’s daily idea, I came across another mom’ post complaining about how they always loose the monkeys; she started using hangers as game pieces instead! So for today’s daily idea we are going to do just that.

You’ll need 12 hangers and a laundry basket. Place all of the hangers in the basket and dump them into the middle of the floor. Taking turns, each player starts with one hanger and tries to hook another hanger. Keep trying to hook a hanger onto the bottom one until one of the hangers drops. Whoever can hang the most in one change is the winner.

Daily Idea #344: One Handed Lego

As I have mentioned before, my family loves Legos. We haven’t had a daily idea with these little gems in a few months so we are busting out the legos today and getting to building.

For today’s daily idea, each person will be tasked with building an object out of legos (a car, a house, a rocket, etc…). The caveat is that they are only allowed to use one hand while building. Another super simple but not so easy task in the cache of daily ideas.

Enjoy!

Daily Idea #343: Chubby Bunny

Supervision is key in this game as it involves stuffing your mouth with marshmallows followed by speaking with your mouth full, however, lots of laughter will ensue.

The only item you need for this game is large bag of marshmallows. Each person will put a marshmallow in their mouth; without eating it or spitting it out everyone must say the phrase, “Chubby Bunny”. The next round begins by putting another marshmallow in your mouth (without eating the first marshmallow) and again having everyone say, “Chubby Bunny”. Whomever can’t say it without spitting out their marshmallow is out. Continue each round by putting yet another marshmallow in your mouth and saying the phrase until everyone is out (because they either can’t say, “Chubby Bunny” or because they spit out their marshmallow).

Daily Idea #342: We Remember

It’s often difficult to remember why we have a day off for some of our national holidays. It’s become more about sales, bar-b-ques, and opening up the pools.

On today’s Memorial Day, we are honoring those who have lost their lives in serving our country to protect us and to fight for our freedoms.

To remember those who have fallen, we are going to virtually visit some War Memorials from the country at this website. We can then look up some facts as to why these wars began and for what we were fighting. They aren’t always easy answers but it’s important to learn from the past and even more important to remember.

Thank you so all those who have served, are serving, and will serve to protect us. We remember.

Daily Idea #341: Water Balloon Piñata

I have never been a fan of water balloon fights; as much fun as it is to throw a fairly soft balloon and watch it explode, cleaning up the bits of balloon that litter the yard afterwards takes forever. Plus, I’m always worried I have missed bits of latex and they will end up in the ocean somehow.

Today’s daily idea solves part of that problem so I thought we’d give it try. Fill up as many balloons as you would like with water and tie them off. Then, attach them to a long piece of string (you can either use clothes pins to attach them or tie the string around the little nubbin where the balloon is tied shut). Hang the string between two trees or two posts. Each person then takes turns trying to pop each of the water balloons using a plastic bat or a small stick.

Fun game— easy cleanup!

Daily Idea #340:Face Your Dice

Today’s daily idea comes from www.drawinghowtodraw.com— I have never considered myself an artist; stick figures are my go to. However, today we are going to use the skills we have in drawing basic shapes to create a face or a landscape through this awesome game. This is great for little kids learning how to use a pencil since it works on fine motor skills as well as older kids who are fine tuning their skills.

You’ll need a dice, a piece of paper for each person playing, and a pencil for each person playing. With the following sheet as the guide, each person will roll the dice 6 times. For each roll, you will copy the shape or design that correlates to that number. For example: on your first turn if you roll a 2, you will draw an oval. On your second turn if you roll a 6, you will copy the eyes from the graph associated with the number 6. And so on.

There is a face graph and a landscape graph and you can play this as many times as you’d like to create multiple faces and landscapes!

Daily Idea #339: Silly String Fight

Cleaning up from anything isn’t as much fun as making the mess, but sometimes cleaning up silly string is almost as much fun as spraying it all over the place.

Now is the time of year where the weather is getting really nice (even in those colder parts of the country or even on the other side of the equator) and more and more of us are getting out to the park, the pool, the beach… Well, for today’s daily idea we are getting out; we are getting outside with cans of silly string! Each person will get a with a specific color of silly string. The only rule is that another person cannot be sprayed in the face.

Once each can in finished, have each person be in charge of finding a color of silly string, and it should not be the color that they sprayed. They are then in charge of getting that color picked up.

Daily Idea #338: My Moosestache

In my honest opinion, mustaches are one of the funniest additions to the human body. My dad has one. He has one almost my entire life; the one time he shaved it off, I told him he looked like a monkey! To be fair, I was about 9 or 10 years old.

To honor the mustache, for today’s daily idea, we are going to make our own mustaches out of construction paper. Once created and colored in, we will cut them out. Finally we will use some tape to stick them to our upper lips and keep them there for as long as the tape holds. Whenever we refer to our own mustache or someone else’s, we will ask (in the best British accent you can muster), “Oh, do you like my moosetache?”

It’s silly, it’s fun, and it reminds us to not take ourselves so seriously.

Daily Idea #337: Decorate the Car

This week starts the last week of school for many of us (and for some, we feel like just went back to school). An end of year tradition that you may want to start today for could be today’s daily idea. Paint and decorate the car!

I found these car paints on Amazon. We are going to decorate the car with these paints by writing words of encouragement and congratulations, dots and squares, and whatever else the kids want to create. The best part is that in a few days, we’ll also wash the car to make sure the paints don’t then stay on the car for too long (and what kid doesn’t love to get out a bucket, water, soap, and a sponge and have a car wash?).

Daily Idea #336: Snack Bags

Summer is around the corner and for some of us that means feeding our children not only breakfast and dinner but lunch and snacks in between. We really get to see the empty pits they have for stomachs.

For today’s daily idea, we are creating snack bins for the summer. Whether your children will be home or going to a day camp, they can and should have some control over the things they eat (within reason). We are headed to the dollar store to pick up a few medium sized baskets/buckets. Different snacks will go into each bucket (for example: chips and pretzels in one bucket, fruit leathers and other gummy type food in another bucket, squeeze yogurts and applesauces in another bucket). They can have the choice of a fruit, a vegetable, and one snack from each bucket for the day. Get them involved by helping to sort the snacks into each bucket and if they are old enough have them design labels for each bucket.

Daily Idea #335: Student Becomes the Teacher

Today I am putting things in my kids’ hands. I want them to teach me something they have learned this past year. The task is have them take 10-15 min to plan what they want me to learn and then have about 20 min each to teach me. It can be a science experiment, a history lesson, a math problem, etc…

Daily Idea #334: Car Bingo

Here we are again almost at the end of the school year of possibly the weirdest year of all of our lives (even for those that went back to in-person school). And now that we are venturing out farther from home, road trips may be on the horizon. Our family loves road trips and one thing that gets us from point A to point B without using the iPads constantly is “Road Trip Bingo”.

I found this set of bingo boards from Holly Kids Activity Blog. Even if you aren’t going on a road trip, you can print these out and use them if you have to run to the store or for any reason you need to get the kids in the car.

Daily Idea #333: Dictionary

I had a friend in college who would challenge me to learn a new word every week. We would pick a word from the dictionary and all week, we would try to use it in a sentence. My vocabulary expanded and I actually looked forward to figuring out how to use said word in random conversations.

For today’s daily idea, I am going to do just that with my kids. I will have them open the dictionary to a random page and put their finger anywhere on the page. Where it lands will be the word we will learn. All day we will try to then use that word in different sentences. If it’s a longer word, we will also see what other words may be hidden in the letters. For example, if the word was “excitable”, we’d have to try and spell other words from those letters— exit, table, cite, etc…

Daily Idea #332: Water Buckets

It’s getting warmer out which means pool and beach playtime! One way to stay cool in the summer heat when you don’t have access to a pool or the beach is to simply bring the water outside and to make it last. With this simple game, the kids will take a while playing outside and getting soaked at the same time.

All you need is two buckets (one full of water) and a few large sponges. The idea is to transfer the water from one bucket to the other with the sponges. Space the buckets a distance apart from each other; starting at the first bucket dip those sponges in the water, get them to the second bucket, and squeeze out all that water!

Daily Idea #331: Sidewalk Chalk

Now that the world is opening back up a little bit and people are really venturing outside, we are going to bring today’s daily idea to the sidewalk. Break out the chalk and get your creative juices flowing.

1) Create an obstacle course for your child(ren) to follow— jump from dash to dash, follow a line in a squiggle, shuffle along a circle…

2) Make a chalk city with roads and buildings

3) Draw spirals to create a Mandela

4) Think of a word you’d like to create. Place tape in the shape of each letter of the word and color over the tape. Remove the tape when the area is covered in chalk and see your word clear on the sidewalk.

Daily Idea #330: Pillow March

We have built many a fort with the pillows and cushions in our house but we have never tried a pillow march. For today’s daily idea, we are going to lay out every pillow and cushion in our house in a line in the living room. One by one, we are going to march form pillow to pillow and try as hard as we can to not fall off. Once we have mastered the pillow march, we will try spacing the pillows out a little bit and jumping from pillow to pillow or cushion to cushion.

Daily Idea #329: Popsicle Stick Throwing Star

Like almost any other child in the world, my kids love things that create a mess. Anything that they can “explode” or have make noise and then explode is a thrill. For today’s daily idea, we are bringing out the crafting popsicle sticks and creating ninja stars that then break apart when they connect with something. Thank you to www.icanteachmychild.com for this great picture explaining how to put the ninja star together. Once put together, toss it in the air and watch it explode as it hits the ground!

Daily Idea #328: Paint (with your feet)

Get ready to get messy today. We love to paint, but my kids are getting a little bored with the usual way to paint. So, why not mix it up a bit? For today’s daily idea, we are going to paint by using our feet!

Lay out some protective paper or plastic on the floor. Each child will get small amounts of paint (we like to pour each color of paint on a paper plate to make it look like a painter’s palette), a paint brush, a small cup of water to wash the paint brush if needed, and some paper. The painter can sit on the floor on a chair. By gripping the paint brush with your toes, each painter can then create their own work of art.

Daily Idea #327: Sound Chain

We make lots of noise in our family. Very often, we will have a sound effect made by one of us to go with something or someone falling on the floor, brushing our teeth, getting into bed… seriously, pretty much anything. For today’s daily idea, we are tapping into this and making a sound chain.

The first person makes a noise. The next person makes that noise and then adds a noise. Each person thereafter makes the noises created before them and then adds their own noise. With any number in the group of people (2 people-as many people as you have together), see how long you can make your noise chain without forgetting a noise.

Daily Idea #326: Picture Day!

I don’t know about you, but many times the only way for me to be in a picture with my kids is if I take some selfies. Because Mother’s Day is this Sunday and there’s no better way to make me as a mom feel like I’m needed and loved than to be included in pictures, I am handing over my camera to my kids.

Now, I have a phone with a camera and I’m not so inclined to give them free reign over my phone so we’ll set some limits— how long do they get the phone, what kinds of pictures can they take, I have ultimate say over what pictures we will keep…

Enjoy being the subject instead of the photographer!