Games

Why not tire them out with physical game & stuff in the day time then you won't need bored games.:o))
Bob.

Hi 1X1

UNO entertained us and our kids all one long wet day in the Snowys long ago. Other people in the camp wanted to know why we laughed all day. Now their kids can be drawn into endless games and kept amused and out of mischief for hours too. Its probably #1 on our list of grandkid preparation.

Others that work, would you believe, include chess, snakes and ladders (probably too young for your kids' age group). The nuclear option is Monopoly - but be warned it is absolutely addictive and will probably ignite World War 3! Can be made to last for days.

Have fun.

Max

Hi Squared

Same age as my kids, we play word games.
Guess the animal is one we made up, someone thinks of an animal we only use native and everyone tries to work it out by asking questions. Does it live in a tree, does it have fur, does it have four legs, that sort of thing, gets fun when some one picks an insect.
Also go through the alphabet and think of colours, food, animals and any other category you can think of.
When ever we stop I run them crazy and at lunch time we get their food ready so they can eat it when we start driving again, do not spend your break time making them sit just to eat.
We have carrot sticks, watermelon, rockmelon and grapes for snacks with just the odd pack of chips with lots of water. Keep sugars down as they dehydrate and get tiered but not sleepy just cranky.

Hope this helps.

Have fun
Craig

A simple word game: Whoever is "in" must answer questions thrown at them by other players without using the words YES or NO or variants of either such as YEP. The only other rule is that they cannot repeat a phrase or response too many times.

A simple card game: Its called CHEAT. All cards in the deck are dealt out equally to the players. Object of the game is to be the first to get rid of all the cards in their hand. First player places one to four cards face down in the centre and declares 1,2,3 or 4 aces. Second player must place down 2's, Third player 3's and so on. At anytime any player can call CHEAT. The last player to place down cards then turns them over to reveal whether he actually placed down the cards that he declared or not. If the player did not cheat then the player who called must take up all cards from the centre of the table. If the player DID cheat then he must take up all the cards. The sequence for the cards starts at Ace, 2, 3 and so on to King then back to Ace again. Card suites are irrelevant in this game. A good poker face is a must for this game.

Cheers...Taz

There are an awful lot of good ones. The ones that come to mind first are Greed, Scrabble, 500, Backgammon. Uno and Cheat are great as well as mentioned above. A lot of the older card games are great like Gin Rummy, one called Newmarket that I can never remember the proper rules for, poker for matches, In Betweens for matches (though the kids never like it when you clean them out :)).

And there is always a good book which can keep my kids quiet for hours.

We make up a lot of games that we only need pen and paper for. We list the alphabet down the side of a page and then give them a topic like 'food' or 'animals' and get them to write down something in that topic for each letter of the alphabet. Educational and Fun!
We also make up treasure hunts for things we know are around the place. Just make a list of things like a white rock, a gum leaf, a clothes peg, a shoe, a stick, a pen, a cup, a piece of rope, something pink etc etc.
Another good one is to fold a piece of paper in half and have one child draw the head of an animal on the top half of the paper and just bring the marks onto the bottom of the paper where the neck is. The next child then has to draw from the neck down without knowing what is on the other half of the paper. The combinations are usually hilarious and they spend time coming up with names for these creatures e.g. you might end up with an elephants head on a chickens body, is it an elecken? or a chickephant????
Hope this helps and have fun! (oh, my kids are this age groups also)