Half-Mask with Glasses

I've decided to participate in BlogHer's NaBloPoMo for October. The theme is "Mask."

It's hard to wear a mask when you wear glasses. The glasses just get in the way. Because I've worn glasses since the age of four, I've either had to sacrifice the mask or the glasses each year for Halloween.

But when my husband and I went to a charity masquerade ball recently, I got an idea for how I could wear both. Here's my half-mask, with glasses.

I bought a cat mask at the Halloween store and added maribou around the ears and a jewel
on the nose to jazz it up a bit.

Then I cut the mask's elastic band, wrapped it tightly around my back-up pair of glasses, and
knotted it.

Voila! I have a mask, and I can still see! Also, no elastic to mess up my hair!

Playing "Quest"

Prepare for battle, lion monster!

Inevitably, some time around 5:30 my six-year-old says, "Mommy, will you play a game with me?" I admit, not to my credit, that I often try to get out of it because by that time of day I am tired and hungry and I do not want to play Battleship or Chutes and Ladders while my older son, D-Mac, constantly tries to change the rules so he'll win and my three-year-old, Ducky, ignores the rules completely and bickering ensues.

But yesterday, when I asked D-Mac what game he had in mind, he said he wanted to go on a quest. Now that was something I could play along with! We gathered equipment - a rope for D-Mac, a belt for me, and invisible spikes for Ducky (raise your hands in the air, elbows bent, fingers pointing up, and say "Invisible spikes!") - and set out to face the challenges D-Mac devised. First we had to climb a crystal mountain (the stairs). Then we fought invisible ninjas, battled a lion monster, escaped from sharks, and finally climbed across a cave rigged with bombs to retrieve a flag.

Each challenge took place in a different room; we wandered around the house using whatever we found in that room as part of the challenge. There was no sitting still, no waiting for turns, and we got to make up the rules as we went along (within reason - D-Mac still tried to change his own rules when things didn't go his way). By the time we'd captured the flag it was time for dinner.

I'm looking forward to going on another quest today.

The Scribble Game

Here's another game that my siblings and I used to play, which I now play with my own children. My boys are 6 and 3, but my sister and I still used to play this game in high school.

Equipment: paper, something to draw with

1. Each player draws a scribble. Don't go overboard - if you fill up the whole paper there won't be any space for the next person to draw!
2. Everyone passes their paper to someone else.
3. Each player has to create a drawing using the scribble as a starting point.

For a variation, decide what everyone needs to draw: animals, spaceships, houses, food, etc.

It can also be fun to have each person use a different color of marker or crayon so that you can see which part was the original scribble.

Here are a few examples from a recent game I played with my boys.

My Favorites from NaBloPoMo This Week

Here are a few of the posts I enjoyed this week from other bloggers who are participating in NaBloPoMo:

1. Kid’s Feelings When they Lose from The Giggling Truckers Wife
2. Sensory Play from The Playdate Crashers
3. When play is a shock from Shouldn't Life Be More Than This?

Gaming Style Gives a Clue About Personality

Photo by Ardail Smith

My mom used to tell me a story about how she and her two sisters liked to play the board game Clue:

My mom, the oldest, wanted to play according to the rules of the game.
Her middle sister wanted to make up her own rules.
Her youngest sister wanted to use the game board and pieces to play house.

Years later, my mom became a teacher. Her middle sister took off for Japan, and still lives there. Her youngest sister has a house filled with a beautiful collection of antiques.

Back on the Blogging Wagon

So much for posting every day during this month! But a couple of mistakes shouldn't mean abandoning the whole project. I've just got to take a deep breath and get back on the blogging wagon. After all, it's a fun place to be.

Margin Doodles No. 11

I'd like to welcome all the new readers who clicked over here from BlogHer's NaBloPoMo pages. Every Friday, I share some doodles from the margins of old school or meeting notes.

Today I have more doodles from my Gem Lakes Recreation Association meeting notes. ("Recreation," see? It works with the NaBloPoMo theme of "Play"!)

This beaver looks distinctly guilty. At least one meeting a year,
we end up discussing the legality of dispatching these troublesome critters.

Sadly, there aren't actually any mermaids in Gem Lakes.

This needs to be my next t-shirt design. In neon colors.

Toys, Then and Now

Thinking about this month's NaBloPoMo theme, "Play," has gotten me thinking about how the way my kids play is different from how I played as a child. Of course, I was a girl who mostly played with my sister, so naturally there would be some differences between how we played and how my two boys play with each other. But the more I try to think of differences, the more similarities I seem to find.

Thirty years after my childhood, I notice they like a lot of the same things I did:

Board Games	Legos
Action figures (for them, for me it was dolls)	Dress-up
Play-doh	Markers & paints

What's different?

• The graphics on a lot of the board games are updated (e.g. Candy Land), and not always for the better, IMO. The little plastic pieces on a lot of games are also more detailed, thanks to computer-aided design and manufacturing.
• The Legos are much fancier
• Thanks to advances in materials technology, the action figures are less expensive and more detailed. They can talk and light up - and those are just the ones that come with Happy Meals.
• The range of inexpensive dress-up clothes and props is vastly wider than it was in my childhood: cheap foam swords and plastic knight's armor; sparkly, shiny fairy costumes; inexpensive fabric superhero outfits better than anything I could have bought in a store way back when.
• The Play-doh comes in more colors
• The proliferation of stores like Michaels and Hobby Lobby gives kids access to an array of art and craft supplies that I could only dream about as a girl

Advances in technology (not to mention cheap overseas labor) have given my children wonderful toys to play with. But in the end, the way they play with them is really not much different from how I played with my low-tech, non-sparkly, non-speaking toys. The toys still require imagination to make them work.

Handful: A Simple Lego Game

Photo by Slack Pics

Before there was Lego Creationary, my brother, sister and I used to play a game we called "Handful." Now that I have kids of my own, I've taught the game to them. Here's how to play.

Equipment: A big tub or bag full of Legos.

Basic game: Each player closes his eyes, reaches into the tub, and grabs a handful of Legos. He has to build something with whatever he's ended up with. When both players are done building, they have to explain what they've made.

Variation 1: The players all agree on what they're going to build (car, treehouse, washing machine) before they grab their Legos. This can get really fun and creative. For example, when you have two minifigs, a wheel, and a tree and you need to build a submarine.

Variation 2: Each player gets to tell another player what to build before they grab their Legos. This makes the game a little more competitive. My six-year-old likes this version of the game.

Build, create, have fun!

NaBloPoMo May 2012

Why am I posting on a Tuesday? Because it's May 1, the first day of NaBloPoMo. I decided it's time to reach out to a wider community through my new blog here, so I'm participating.

BlogHer does this every month, and every month has its own theme. The theme for May is "Play." I've made a nifty blog badge here, which you are welcome to use if you are also participating.

And here's the small version I'm using on my own blog: