Successful Children's Birthday Party ActivitiesWritten by Stephanie Olsen
Successful Children's Birthday Party Activities~ lots of fun, cheap, creative and even bilingual! ~ by Stephanie Olsen Having now somewhat recovered from Emily's seventh birthday party, I thought I'd share a couple of more popular games and activities, used by a group of children between ages of 4 and 10. Bilingual Vocabulary Picture Bingo As a unilingual home schooling American in Europe, I've got a fairly singular set of conditions to work under when creating activities. This bingo game was a hit with lots of repeat requests. Materials needed: one square piece of construction or other sturdy paper and one Magic Marker for each child9 bingo chips such as buttons or M&Ms or bubble gum per childprepared list(s) of 18 objects to be called, plus a copy of each list cut up per word into 18 small cardsa large bowl/hat to pull words from when callingone translator for any other linguistically-challenged expatriatesMethod: Hand out papers, markers and bingo chips. I had kids spread out all over floor. Instruct children to make a 9 square grid; two horizontal lines and two bisecting vertical lines (you can show your sample bingo card or demonstrate on a child's blackboard). I actually used phrases "nine square grid", "horizontal lines" and "bisecting vertical": it exposes children to mathematical terms in a friendly environment and, because sounds very impressive, there's a true sense of accomplishment when kids complete task. Using your list of (let's say) animals, tell children to draw - in any square they wish - picture of EITHER an elephant OR a lion. Stress that card they are creating should be unique to make game more fun. If you are working on a second language, or just happen to be living in a foreign non-English-speaking country, repeat animal name in applicable language. Once first box is completed and using second pair of objects on your list, tell kids to draw - in any square - a picture of EITHER a snake or a monkey. This particular party having a jungle theme, it helped younger children for me to point out relevant wall decorations (very simple animal cut-outs I had made night before). When all cards are completed, explain that aim of game is to shout BINGO! whenever a child gets three markers in a row - in any direction. Here terms horizontal, vertical and diagonal can be used and understood without explanation as you draw lines on board. NOTE: when you start game, remember to call out words in both languages. After a couple of rounds, you can make it more interesting by calling them out in target language only - kids will automatically translate out loud thereby helping ones not sure of translation. We played until cards were full, so that everyone got to shout BINGO! several times - there were no prizes given out, just lots of "wow!"s and "again?!s" and "that's incredible!"s from an appreciative bingo caller.
| | Clutter Is NaturalWritten by Stephanie Roberts
Nature loves clutter. Just think of all stuff that drops from trees, washes in on tide, or is blown by wind into your backyard. Birds molt, animals shed, snakes slither out of their skin, and they all just leave it lying there to rot into earth. Follow any two-year-old around for a day and you'll see that we're not much better. Living in clutter does not mean that you are a slob or an undisciplined failure. It means that you are human, and your origins are showing. Way, way back in farthest branches of your family tree, your ancient ancestors lived a somewhat more hand-to-mouth existence than we do. Stocking up was a smart thing to do when antelope might not roam your way again for a while, and surviving a cold winter depended on how big a stash of firewood and dried berries you had in back of cave. The urge to acquire is instinctive and completely normal. But kinds of circumstances that could lead primitive man to use up provisions he'd stashed away are no longer much of a threat to us. I am a big fan of Costco, eBay, and 24-hour convenience stores, but we don't really need them, and effect on our closets and garages (not to mention our waistlines!) has been catastrophic. There seems to be an agreement in our culture that life was "simpler" back whenever. Yearning for simplicity makes us believe that our clutter is against way things should be. What was different in past was they didn't have credit cards, mail order catalogs, and Internet. Most people only bought what they needed and could afford. When was last time any of us did that? In span of just a few generations cost of goods has gone down dramatically due to mass production. Take a moment to think about how much a basic T-shirt would cost if it were knitted and stitched by hand. How many would you own then? What if you had to make it yourself? Would you be so ready to think you need another one in a slightly different color or cut, or maybe with a little Lycra in it? A common lament about contemporary social norms bemoans scattering of nuclear family, lack of a sense of community, and loss of spirituality in daily life. We feel disconnected, stressed, empty, and we have been trained by mass media since early childhood that having more things will make us feel better. At some point someone told us "you can't buy happiness," but we didn't listen, because everyone likes new toys and buying things makes us feel secure, which is almost as good as feeling happy. So we shop and shop and buy more things for our homes (and our cars, and our cell phones) until we're drowning in stuff. And then we shop for things to help us manage other things and get them organized and neatly stored. Usually all that results from this is an over-abundance of misused, unused, or wrong-sized containers that metastasize into their own variety of clutter. Combine a new "pre-approved" credit card offer in mailbox every week, buy-in-bulk warehouse stores, easy internet shopping, and cable shopping networks beaming bargains into your television set 24 hours a day with hard-wired delusion that giving in to these temptations is a good idea, and our once life-preserving impulse to stock up goes into overdrive. The problem isn't that we are completely lacking in judgment or self-discipline. The problem is that primal parts of our brains, where compulsion to stock up while it's available resides, is not programmed for a world in which more than we could ever possibly need will still be there tomorrow. And next day. And day after that.
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