There are two versions of this great game. The first is a drawing game which is suitable for kids 5+ although little kids may want to play as part of a team with an older child or adult. The second is a written game suitable for older kids. For both you will need 2 or more players.

Thank you to Kiddley reader Julie for reminding us! Her game with her daughter is reproduced above and her instructions are abridged for game 1 below.

You will need (for both games):
A piece of paper
Pens

Game 1
All players sit in a circle and start with a pen and a piece of paper which is folded it across into quarters. Flatten it out again and each player privately draws a head of some kind (human, animal or fantastical) in the first quarter, leaving a little bit of neck sticking down into the next quarter.

Players fold over this first quarter so the drawing is covered but the neck is left showing.

The pieces of paper are all passed on to the next player who then adds a torso and arms (or wings or whatever) in the second quarter and then draws the tops of the legs down into the next quarter. Fold the paper so the rest of the drawing is hidden.

Pass the pieces of paper on again and this time legs (but not feet) are drawn in. Fold and pass it on again and finish with the feet in the last quarter.

Fold the whole thing up one last time and pass it along and then each player can unfold one to discover the most amazing, zany creature.

Game 2
All players sit in a circle and start with a piece of paper and pen.

Each player writes part of the story on the piece of paper in front of them and then folds the paper so it’s hidden and hands it on with each turn.The structure of the story which each player needs to follow is as follows:

1) A description, such as “The frightful..” or “The challenging yet delightful…” or “The incredibly handsome…” etc.

2) A man’s name

3) Another description as above

4) A woman’s name

5) Where they met

6) What he gave her

7) What she said

What he said

9) What the consequence was

10) What the world said about it.

Much hilarity ensues! Here are ours (click for larger version):

and my favourite:

From Kiddley reader Anne Margaret (the woman who brought us the now web-famous crayon cookies) comes Lookie Loos! This is such a great project. The idea is to fill an empty drink bottle full of rice and trinkets with a list of the contents stuck on the outside. As the child turns the bottle from side to side and shakes it up, the trinkets reveal themselves and your child can mark off what they find on the list.

You will need:
An empty, dry drink bottle
A bunch of little trinkets and odds and ands (such as you see below)
Rice or sand
Food colouring, a couple of tablespoons of alcohol and a plastic bag (optional)
Super glue and/or packing tape
Paper
Pens or computer
Funnel

Anne Margaret’s instructions are fabulously straight forward. In a nutshell:

Make a list of your trinkets before you put them in the bottle.

If you want to colour your rice (as Anne Margaret has done) you will need to put it in a plastic bag along with the alcohol and food colouring. Seal the bag, and squish the colour and rice around. Let it sit for an hour or so and then spread it out (on a tray or the like) and let it dry outside.

Add your trinkets to the bottle and then the rice, using the funnel. Leave some space at the top so the rice can swish around when shaken.

Stick on the lid with super glue and also wrap some packing tape around it if you have littlies. Stick on a label with a list of the contents. You may want to do this on the computer and use different fonts or colours or even pictures of the items for the pre-readers.

Now it’s time to play! Shake up the bottle and as different trinkets are found cross them off the list.

We think that you could use this as a party game, stocking stuffer, toy for the car on long trips or for a small baby who will just enjoy shaking it and looking at the contents.

Thanks Anne Margaret! You are a gem.

We have been playing many games of Memory around here recently. It’s a good game to spread out and play quickly while waiting for the pasta to cook and it’s quite entertaining for most ages. For those who are unfamiliar with the game, you need a pack of cards (a deck of 52 playing cards is fine if you don’t have a deck of cards specially designed for memory) which you spread out face down in a grid. Each player takes it in turn to flip two over, with the object of finding two that match. When a match is found, the player takes those cards and puts them aside. When all the cards have been claimed, the player with the most pairs is the winner.

We are using a pack which comes with a Charlie and Lola book but it occurred to me that it would be such an easy thing to make.

Some ideas we have had:

1) Buy a box of blank visiting cards, index cards or a cut out twenty cards from a sheet of cardboard all exactly the same size. Let the kids decorate the cards with pictures of objects – making sure they make a match for each card.

2) Alternatively, take Charlie and Lola’s cue and make a game of “Flip Flop”. Instead of making exact duplicates for the cards (which might get a little tedious especially for smaller kids), think up an associated object and draw that instead. That way if you turn up a tube of toothpaste you need to find the tooth brush, the monkey matches with the banana and so on.

3) If drawing doesn’t appeal, cut images out of magazines and then cut them in half. Stick each half on to a separate card to make pairs.

4) For a more high-tech, money spending option, use Moo MiniCards! We recently had a couple of sets of these cute little cards made up with photos from Flickr and we love them. You need to order 100 cards so upload 50 images which they will print twice so that you have matching pairs and you instantly have an enormous game of memory. This way your game will be made up of photos of the kids, pets and holiday snaps. To make the game of Memory more manageable and more memorable, I would suggest splitting up the stack of cards into smaller amounts (maybe sets of 10 or 25 pairs) and perhaps you could give the other sets away as gifts. These cards would also be a great way to make a game of Snap.

5) The last idea we have it to use photographs. Get a roll of film printed out with duplicates and you have an instant game of Memory. If you have a polaroid camera sitting around this would be a great way to create a memory game quickly.

Making a simple board game is one of the easiest and fun things you can do on a rainy afternoon.

You will need:
4 pieces of different coloured A4 (or Letter) sized paper
A large game board sized piece of heavy card
Felt tip pens
Glue stick
Glue
Dice

First, cut a strip off the length of each piece of paper about five centimeters (one inch) wide. Cut each of these strips into small squares.

They don’t have to be particularly uniform, in fact it’s better if there are a few smaller pieces as well as a bunch of bigger squares.

Draw a line around the piece of cardboard which will be the track of your game play. Stick a start and finish square at each end:

Then glue all of the little squares side by side along the line…

…until the entire line is covered. It’s best if you mix up the colours so that not too many of the same colour are sitting next to one another – but it doesn’t really matter if they do.

Make a couple of “short cut” places to give the game a bit of interest:

Decorate elaborately or minimally or not at all. You could number the squares if this takes your child’s fancy.

Take the remaining coloured paper and cut each sheet into uniformly sized rectangles:

On the backs of these write your game playing instructions such as “Miss a turn”, “Move forward three spaces”. Obviously it’s more fun to elaborate a little so that they say things like “Win Australian Idol! Move forward two spaces” or “Slip on a banana peel, go back one space” etc. AJ and I came up with the card ideas together – so they were all familiar concepts to a preschooler – “Mummy has a nap, miss a turn”, “Pancakes for dinner! Move ahead three spaces,” but of course they also got faintly ridiculous such as “Meet a monkey who eats your teeth! Go back five spaces”. Because a card will be picked up on every square, I also included a lot of “Stay where you are” cards just so that the game play doesn’t go too quickly.

Our game was vaguely family themed, with pictures of relatives hastily drawn on the squares and on the board. You could come up with all kinds of different themes and looks. I remember when I was a kid we did a similar thing but we made it look like a haunted house and all the instructions were spoooooky. Take you child’s topic du jour (pirates, Wiggles, Thomas, bugs, etc) and make the game board and card instructions fit in.

Make a couple of counters out of rolled up scraps of paper and you are ready to play! Our rules (and they seemed to change with every minute) were simple. The youngest player starts. She (or he, but it was she for us) rolls the dice and moves the number of spaces shown. She picks up a card of the corresponding colour to the place she has landed on and follows the instructions. If she is told to move ahead or back she does so, and her turn ends without picking up another card. Move to the next player.

The older the child the more complicated you might like to make the rules. If you land on a square occupied by another counter, you have to do 20 star jumps or maybe if you land on a square marked with a star get a special star card which you can use to avoid squares marked with aliens (and alien marked squares might mean you have to change counters with another player or something) — really, there is no limit to how wild it could get.

We have an ever growing pile of stuff at Kiddley HQ sitting in a box whistfully referred to as the ‘destined for eBay box.’ The chance of any of the items in it turning up on eBay is very slim, mostly because it seems like too much work to actually list them. One of the things in there is a Nintendo 64 and a pile of game cartridges which we recently hauled out of the box and hooked up to the television. The controllers were a bit tricky for AJ to get the hang of, but slightly older kids shouldn’t have any problems. We spent an afternoon playing Yoshi’s Story, which is a great game for younger kids, and checking out some of the other games, like Mario 64.

Claire also recently unearthed some terrific Nintendo Game & Watch handheld games from the 80s. Amazingly, they still worked with their original batteries.

Although they seem primitive compared to modern game systems, there’s also something really charming about ‘antique’ game systems and consoles, and they have terrific novelty value that will appeal to kids. We’ll be unearthing these gems again when the kids are a bit older and can get more out of them. If you haven’t already sold them on eBay, you may want to hunt down and dust off your old and neglected games and give them another whirl; you might discover some new old family favorites.

It is with some reluctance that I post the details of this game – a game which still brings back a little pang of self-conscious pre-teen bad feelings circa 1982. I was the new kid at a new school and I attended our first casual clothes day (at a school that requires a uniform these are golden and rare days indeed!) wearing a singularly bright pink tracksuit with banana yellow panels. Even for an 11 year old in 1982 it was a fashion tragedy which was met with much mirth from my class mates. When we played this game at morning break these class mates managed to victimise me with every round. HOWEVER – I can see that this game can be lots of fun, so here’s how you play:

You will need:
An open space
Four markers (cones, beanbags etc)
A gaggle of kids who are familiar with their basic colours
optional: a bunch of coloured fabric flags or scarves

Sometimes called “Uncle Sam”, (thanks Emma!) Crocodile should be played outside in a largish play area. Two markers are placed to mark out a start line and then place the other two markets at least 20 feet away to mark out a finish line.

One player is chosen to be the Crocodile who then stands in the centre of the playing field. The other players stand along the start line and if using flags or scarves, these should be tucked into waste bands or pockets, leaving a tail hanging out.

The players along the start line then start chanting “Crocodile, crocodile, may I cross the river?” and the crocodile replies “Yes you may, yes you may, if you are wearing *insert colour*”.

All the players who have that colour somewhere on their clothing may pass across to the finish line (you may want to put in an “underwear doesn’t count”) without being tagged.

The rest of the players must then run across to the finish line and avoid being tagged by the Crocodile. If using flags or scarves the Crocodile must attempt to remove the flag or scarf from the player (obviously the player is not allowed to hold on to the flag).

The players who are caught then join the Crocodile in the middle of the field as Crocodile Helpers. Begin the game again, this time with the Crocodile Helpers also tagging players. This goes on until one player is left who then becomes the Crocodile for the next round.

AJ currently doesn’t get much time in front of the computer. When she does, it’s usually to spend some time using TuxPaint or to play games at Disney Playhouse.

Compared to many other sites we’ve looked at, Disney Playhouse has high quality content for kids, especially preschoolers. The games and activities on the site are really well done; almost all of them feature verbal instructions, making it much easier for preshool kids to know how to play the games and navigate around the mini-sites. Most of the featured programs are also shows that we really like, including Charlie and Lola, Bear in the Big Blue House, and The Koala Brothers.

Although the main playhouse page has ads including pop-ups (still pretty crappy in my opinion), the featured sections are all ad free. It’s also fairly easy for kids to unknowingly click on fun-looking links that actually take them to less desirable parts of the disney website. AJ has become pretty adept at knowing which links keep her in the playhouse and which ones don’t, but supervision here can be pretty important.

What other sites would you recommend for preschool age kids?

Here is another game from my childhood. Just like “Fences” I have very fond memories of it, despite it’s rather sinister premise!

You will need:
An open space
A group of kids who can vaguely count

One child is chosen to be Mr Wolf. All the others stand back in a line at least 15 paces and at most about five metres (about 16 feet). Mr Wolf turns his back on the group. Now all the children cry out “What’s the time Mr. Wolf?”. Mr Wolf chooses a number between 1 and 12 and calls out, for example; “It’s 3 o’clock!”. Everyone paces forward the corresponding number of steps, counting out loud. This continues until Mr. Wolf perceives that the group are quite close – and then when asked what time it is, he or she can shout out “Dinner Time!” and then turn around and chase the group back towards the start line. The one who is caught becomes the next Mr. Wolf. If no one is caught, the existing Mr. Wolf continues on to the next round. It sounds very simple, and it is, but it is good fun for little kids who are learning to count.

This game is brilliant for long car or plane trips; it only needs a few materials, and not a huge amount of concentration. I think my brother and I managed to consume an entire car journey from Adelaide to Wagga (a long way) with this game one holiday when we were about 6 and 8.

You will need:
Two or more players
Pens or pencils and A3 or Letter sized paper
You could use graph paper to save yourself from having to draw rows of dots, or you can download and print off some pdf files we prepared earlier:
short game (least amount of dots): A4 : US letter
medium game: A4 : US letter
long game: A4 : US letter

Each player takes it in turn to draw one horizontal or vertical line between two dots (no diagonals) anywhere on the grid. When a player draws the line that closes off a one unit square, it gets marked with their initial and it becomes their square:

They will then get another turn.

If the line completes two squares both become theirs, but they don’t receive another turn.

When all the squares are fenced off, the initials of each player are counted up and the winner of the game is the person with the most squares.

I found a great set of instructions for making homemade juggling balls from balloons and rice. Making them took less than 5 minutes and they kept us all entertained for the afternoon, even if our juggling skills didn’t improve dramatically.

A couple of tips if you decide to make some of your own:

measure out the rice to ensure that each ball will be the same size and weight.
if the juggling balls will be used by (mostly) small hands, use small balloons rather than big ones.

Here is some instructional video for learning to juggle, and some speculation that kids who juggle get better grades.