In this age of handheld video games, portable DVD players, and ever-present cell phones, too many people have forgotten the simple joys of old-fashioned fun. Try these ideas for games and family activities that require everyone to turn off the television and tune in to each other.
- Take your child out for her first big catch.
- Set up games that kids and adults can play together―like croquet and badminton.
- Take turns around a campfire telling scary (but not too scary) ghost stories.
- Provide pure joy: sun, shore, and sand castles.
- Introduce a new generation to an old game, bocce.
- Encourage a future Tiger Woods to practice hitting it out of the rough (and away from the house!).
- Toss the best pizza party ever, with café tablecloths and stick-on mustaches.
- Scout out a good climbing tree, with an angled trunk and strong, low branches.
- Unleash an imagination, with delicious results.
- Let kids do a little backward thinking at a party where everything―decorations included―is reversed.
- Make gorgeous bubbles without a wand: Form an OK sign, submerge fingers in bubble solution, and blow gently.
- Give a child the taste of freedom that comes with a bike.
- Run with abandon in the sunshine.
- Grab some sidewalk chalk and draw a hopscotch court that you can jump along on too.
- Send young guests at a backyard birthday party fishing for prizes.
- Provide a world of possibility with a cupful of crayons.
- Start a game of tag―the more players, the merrier.
- Run an egg race using spoons and red foam balls.
- Turn paper-airplane making into a shared sport by folding a pair with your child and then seeing whose can go the farthest.
- Organize a game of four square, with chalk, a ball, and at least four players.
- Turn on sprinklers for cooling-off fun.
- Welcome children into the kitchen, a wonderful way for parents and kids to spend time together.
- Punch a small hole in the bottom of each can, slide in a string, and knot it to make a tin-can telephone.
- Give your child free rein on a wall―or at least on an easy-to-wipe-clean chalkboard decal.
- Lose the donkey and pin the pepperoni on the pizza instead.
- Enjoy the spoils of a treasure hunt–themed party with a band of mates.
- Let your little one play fortune-teller with this paper game that predicts a player’s future―like “You will serve dessert for dinner.”
- Fill a pool with toys of summer. No child will resist their lure.
- Stuff a piñata with treats and suspend it from a tree limb: a sure party hit.
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