Having trouble getting the kids to lend a hand? Add a little fun! Here are a few suggestions:
Sock-cleaning the bathtub: Your kids get to feel like they’re making a mess while they’re actually cleaning. Coat the tub with some lathery soap flakes or sudsy cleanser, add water, and let them dance the tub clean.
Make hand puppet dusters: Hand puppets can slide along banisters, along coffee tables and counters, “devouring” dust as they go. Hot glue gun some felt ears, yarn wiskers, googly eyes onto a sock and you’re kid will have a handheld cleaning buddy.
Glam cleaning tools: Get kids to make their own glam feather dusters by bunching together multicoloured craft feathers with an elastic and fastening it to a bamboo rod or chopstick. Kids’ are much more likely to get into something when they get to use tools that are their size for them. Read more...
Chores, for both kids and parents, are much easier to handle when you make them into a game. In the immortal words of Mary Poppins, “Ev’ry task you undertake, Becomes a piece of cake.”
What worked for Mary Poppins: after tidying the nursery, she’d take the kids to the park. What she lacked: an element of competition. It’s not nearly as much fun if everyone wins!
Next Saturday, assemble the team and prep them on the Gamification Blog’s Chore Game. You’ll need a timer and some paper. Every player gets a sheet of paper as a scorecard to record their chores. For every chore you complete, write it on your scorecard. When the timer goes off after an hour, count (and verify) to see who’s done the most chores. Whoever wins, gets some sort of reward. Gamification suggests something like winner chooses dinner, or what movie to watch. We’d go one further and say winner is exempt from dinner clean-up. Read more...
Listen up, gumshoes: we love us some educational games and now Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail coming to Facebook. Amazing. We’ve been looking for a fun way to brush up on geography and pioneering know-how. Did you even know Belize existed before you heard it in the Carmen Sandiego theme song? We didn’t. Via Huffington Post.
If a Girl Scout comes to your door selling cookies, you will now have fewer options to choose from. They’re cutting back to just six varieties. Don’t worry — thin mints are safe. Via Wall Street Journal.
You should probably meet our new best friend Tod Abrams aka The Reluctant Daddy. His 8-year-old son Ethan is totally charming, but check out Tod’s alternate universe where he dreams of his perfect daughter. Why should you get acquainted with our friend Toddy? Because he’s going to be huge and you want to be able to say you always loved his videos: Read more...
