Today we had a party for my kids. I decided to allow my children to invite one friend over to make graham cracker houses with us. Well, I have six children...and five of them care enough...so that makes 10 children crowded around our table to make candy houses. Add to that one more child that I was babysitting that evening...eleven kids, plus the baby. I made the houses the night before. I made the frosting that afternoon. My oldest set up the table with all the houses and candy. It was crowded and crazy. The kids all arrived at 4 PM. Their parents were going to be back at 6 to pick them up. I also made pizza while they were there so they could eat something healthy. Everyone was done with their houses and pizza at 5:15. So, I now had 11 kids to entertain for 45 minutes. I pulled my husband aside to powwow. I told him our dilemma. He looked at me and said, "no electronics?" I said, "No!" We sat thinking for a minute. The kids were getting crazier by the second. Then one of us had the idea to play hide-and-go-seek. We called all the kids together and my husband stepped up like a champ. He had in his head a million versions of hide-and-go-seek, much to my surprise. First he laid down some rules. No hiding in the garage or basement, no scaring little kids, etc. Then we played it the following ways:
- Regular hide-and-go-seek as a warm-up
- All hiders had to stand, the finder had to crawl
- Little kid version, all hiders had to hide in painfully obvious places, two 3-year-olds were our seekers. The funny thing about this one was, that the two three-year-olds wanted to quit after 10 seconds claiming they couldn't find anyone.
- All dark, and the seeker has a flashlight, if you come and tag the kitchen table you are safe
That was the last game. We had the first parent show up when the lights were out. We sat and talked to him in the dark while we waited for the game to end. It was funny and weird.
The kids had a blast! I heard at least one kid say how fun this was. It was much more fun than they ever would have had watching a movie, but it only happened because we weren't doing screen time. Yay!