Tag Archives: games

Home Run

Education, Parenting, Sign Language, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

IMG_1409
I played a lot of sports as a kid, but baseball was the very first team sport I joined. There was a keen dad in our kindergarten class, and somehow he rounded up enough girls that summer to make a team. Looking back, I’m pretty sure it was pure comedy for the parents to watch a dozen 5-year-olds learn how to throw a ball, use a mitt, and (sort of) run around the bases at practices. I remember a lot of horsing around. We were very young and very silly, and it was probably sheer chaos to our adult spectators, but I remember so many fun summer nights spent at the baseball diamond. I played every summer with that same team until we moved away when I was twelve.

Flash forward a few (ahem) years, and now I’m the parent sitting in the bleachers watching my little guy go up to bat and take some swings. Well, a lot of swings, actually. All the kids are swinging and hitting and throwing their hearts out. And boy are they having fun! My guy is thrilled to learn a new sport and join a team with his school-mates and other kids from around town. Sitting there watching his first practice, I realized I had completely forgotten how much I loved playing baseball as a kid, too. Like, really loved it!
IMG_1410
The next day I picked up an adult glove for me from the used sporting goods store, and started throwing the ball around with my new little leaguer that night. Talk about feeding the soul –tossing a baseball back and forth on a warm sunny evening together felt so good.

Last weekend his team played their final game at playoffs and then the league hosted a huge family fair to end the season. I made cookies for snack after our last game, but soon after munching those down the kids made a bee-line over to the other side of the field where hot dogs, cotton candy, popcorn, a dunk tank, and a bouncy castle awaited all the teams on this last day of the season. Super fun.
IMG_1582
This former baseball player mommy got to experience the fun of the game through new eyes, and touch back to my own childhood.

Do you play any sports or activities now that you also played as a kid?

Think about it, you might be like me and remember a whole other side to your childhood that can feed the soul again.

IMG_1408

How to Sign BASEBALL in ASL. www.growingsigns.com

To sign BASEBALL in American Sign Language, pretend you are holding a baseball bat with both hands up, then swing hands forward like swinging the bat to hit a ball.

Le port de Cannes en fête

Education, Parenting, Sign Language, Travel, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

imageOn our second evening in Cannes, families and music lovers were warmly welcomed onto the boardwalk for the second annual Le Port de Cannes en Fêtes, a free festival celebrating summer fun. Why, yes, we’d absolutely love to celebrate in Cannes! We scrubbed up from our beach day and headed to the Esplanade Pantiéro just past the beach where there was a carousel, a picnic area, food trucks, a massive stage and carnival games set up in the seaside square.
image
Scheduled onstage that evening were performances by French music bands Miss America and the Sisters G, and headliners Kool and the Gang. Those of you old enough will remember Kool and the Gang’s huge dance hits from the 80’s like Celebration, Get Down On It, Ladies Night, and ballads like Cherish and Too Hot.

Scott and I were thrilled to see them appearing at this free outdoor concert. That song, Celebration, made it on our wedding CD and kicked off the very-important dancing portion at our reception 14 years ago. Who knew they were still touring?

(Click here if you still can’t quite hear the disco rifts and need a little Kool and the Gang while you stroll with us on this festival evening!)

“Celebrate good times, come on!”

But before the sun set and the concerts began, we had time to wander the area and see all the wonderful family entertainment that was set out on the esplanade. Scott and I quickly realized that the French manage to attain an air of sophistication even with something as simple as carnival games.
imageThis first game we saw was very simple but oh, so tricky! With 2 pulleys, you had to balance and manoever the wooden ball up to the top of the board around all the holes without letting it drop. There were so many games to try, and it was very civilized as kids and adults waited their turn to try them all. Line ups weren’t necessary, everyone just watched for who was next. See what I mean about the civilized stuff?

Mini Ropes Course, Ball Balancer, Tilted Maze & Mini Shuffleboard
image

Mirror Puzzle
image
This one really tested my own left-handed/right-brain synapses, but Ella found it quite easy to assemble the half-a-picture puzzle pieces into one full picture using the mirror.

Nope, none of those silly pay-up-and-give-it-your-best-shot-but-you’ll-never-win kinda games here, and no ratty stuffies as prizes like we’ve always found in our hometown. In Cannes, they set up handcrafted wooden games that actually challenge your body and brain, and they’re great for all ages! No prizes necessary, it was just plain fun. My kids and hubby and I had a blast trying out all the free games, and testing our varying levels of hand-eye coordination. We enjoyed watching how other people solved the puzzles, too. Hands down, it was the best carnival I’d ever seen, and I loved seeing it all through my kids eyes as much as I enjoyed participating in such simple pleasures.

Street performers, magicians, jugglers, and marching bands passed us by on our way down the esplanade towards the boats in Quai St. Pierre.
image
Then we doubled back towards the square as it started getting dark and we could hear Kool and the Gang taking over the stage. We found out that this concert was a surprise announcement, not on Kool and the Gang’s official touring calendar. Apparently they love Cannes, too, and added it to their European concert dates this summer. Our kids thought we were nuts, but Scott and I were so chuffed to see them perform and there might have been a little boogie-ing in the streets (cue the eye rolls). I caught a quick pic of the scene as we four regretfully headed back to our apartment from the fête with sleepy, smiley faces.

“Oh, what a night!”

image

And here’s a great video that shows all the entertainment, games, performers, and Kool and the Gang in action that night at Le port de Cannes en fête 2014.

Haribo Candy Museum

Education, Sign Language, Travel, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Did someone say candy?

To throw in a little excitement for the kids (both big and small) during our week in Avignon, we spent an afternoon at the Musée d’Haribo, a candy museum in the nearby town of Uzès. A whole afternoon? At a candy museum? Mais, oui!
Our friends had visited the museum several times, and recommended it highly for a little sweet tooth fix, and some history, too, of course. Haribo has European roots with factories worldwide. It specializes in making gummy candies of all kinds and shapes, like bears and coke bottles, and began gaining fame after World War I making licorice candies. Licorice is not my thing, but I loooove gummies, and I used to buy the wrapped Maoam chewy candies (pictured below) all the time when I was a kid. I had no idea they had such a long, rich, European background.
image
The man behind Haribo, Hans Riedel, originally came from the town of Bonne, and so created the name of his candy company from the first two letters of his name HA (Hans) RI (Riedel) BO (Bonne) –Haribo!
image
My kids loved the interactive games area where they had to add up the weight totals of different kinds of candy to determine a delivery, and spin the marshmallows tub with one arm in time with the syrup pouring with the other. The museum was unlike any I’d ever seen, and I had moments of feeling like I was in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory at times, with oversized installations of gummies and technicolor displays of Haribo’s incredible repertoire of candy.
image
Although there are Haribo factories all over the world, including North America, apparently the best Haribo candies are made in the European factories. We got to walk through both buildings at the Provence musée -one for display of how the candy was created, and one factory building where certain types of Haribo candies were made. The last place we visited at the Musée d’Haribo was, of course, the gift shop!
image
More candy then I’ve ever seen before, and people were piling it into boxes the size of grocery store baskets. The fever to buy candy was contagious, and although our kids don’t buy or eat candy regularly at home, we decided to join the locals and throw some coke bottles, gummy bears, and sour cherries into a box and call it a day (in France).

To sign CANDY in American Sign Language, twist the tip of your index finger on your cheek:
image

Sur Le Pont D’Avignon

Education, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a popular children’s song which mentions the town of Avignon, France, which was my family’s destination today. Do you remember the song?

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse, l’on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond.

Rough translation:
On the bridge of d’Avignon
We all dance there, we all dance there
On the bridge of d’Avignon
We all dance there, all around.

It’s sung in a round, naming all the people dancing -ladies, gentlemen, etc, and is similar to “Ring Around the Rosy” with everyone circling and falling. The bridge from the song was built in the middle of the 12th century –cue the incredible departure into history for my family!
image
Leaving North America and traveling to France becomes an instant history lesson, since pretty much everywhere you look there’s bound to be something older than Canada. And as you can see from the photo, everything resembles famous paintings, or just plain looks like it should be in a painting. Avignon is in the gorgeous South of France, with an ancient walled city that famously housed 7 popes before becoming part of France during the French Revolution in 1731.

Fast forward a little bit, and you’ll find my family arriving at the Avignon train station during an incredible one-day music festival –Fête de la Musique. Our friends from Vancouver, who are now proud residents of Avignon, picked us up amid the flurry of thousands of other people visiting the city for the one-day free fête which celebrates any and all performers wanting to perform any type of music or song. Pure chaos, but in a good way. We enjoyed a glass of chilled rosé at their apartment before launching our still-jetlagged (and train-weary) bodies into the dizzying kaleidescope of thumping music and people in the cobblestone streets.
image
We saw all sorts of musical performers, but most of all, we reunited our daughter with our friends’ daughters, two of her first best friends. It was an explosion of hugs, kisses, and jumpy jumps as they danced and circled around each other, just like the dancers of that famous song.
image
image

Illustration from The Baby’s Bouquet, A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes by Walter Crane (1878).

The Colours of Sports Day

Education, Parenting, Sign Language, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Processed with Rookie
Every year my school-aged kids have Sports Day, and I have to admit, I love it. I have vivid memories of my own sports days as a kid – I absolutely loved the running, the games, the parade, the 3-legged race, the relays, and admittedly, I loved the doughnuts and hot dogs. All that still happens at my kids’ school now (including the doughnuts!), and it’s like a fantastic jump back in time for me. Literally. There’s a hilarious Parents-Only Sack Race & 3-Legged Race at the beginning to kick off the kids’ day.

Another big part of Sports Day is the COLOURS (yes, in Canada we spell it with a U, bear with me, my south of the border friends!) Each year the kids are assigned to a team with a team COLOUR. For me, I was always on the orange team, which was almost impossible to find clothes in, of course, but my mom did her best to make sure I had one tee shirt with some scrap of orange for sports day. Now that I’m the mother, it’s my job to dig through the dresser drawers for the right tee and shorts to match my kids’ team colour, which changes each year. Sigh.

You should know that I refuse to buy
clothes just for one day. I won’t.

And for some reason, neither of my kids has EVER been on the blue team. Why not? Blue clothes are stacked aplenty in our closets. And why hasn’t there ever been a pink or purple team? That would be handy for the two entire years my daughter refused to wear anything that wasn’t pink or purple. Instead, I’ve repeatedly had to find green, yellow and red, which are unfavoured, scarce clothing colours in my house.

Last year, Ian was on the red team, and I managed to find a red-ish tee in his closet, yay! But it was a scorching weather week, and as Sports Day edged closer I realized he would need a hat to stay cool and protected. That morning, digging through the front closet yielded a cargo green hat. Green! Dagnabbit, I needed something red. After some thought, I decided I’d paint the hat red. I know, I know, that is a pretty silly idea, but I was determined to use what we had. I didn’t have time to paint the whole hat, so I thought about something that could make the hat appear more red than it was, at least from the front, and I remembered something Ian loved that could ensure the hat was a success and worn for Sports Day.

TAH DAH!
Processed with Rookie
Not bad for an 8am paint job.

Sports Day has rolled around again, and Ian informed me that he is not on the red team again, but on the green team this year. Green.
Of course.

What lengths have you gone to for Sports Day colours?

For more COLOURS, check out these Signs of the Month on my website
Processed with Rookie

Cloudy Day Playdate

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

I’m not the only one thinking about good old fashioned free play and unscheduled activities for our kids, this summer, and I loved reading about Peekaboo Beans’s Pop Up Playdates currently happening in my Vancouver. They are organizing outdoor playdates at local parks and playgrounds and inviting families to come out and PLAY! Fantastic idea.

Speaking of playdates, this week my family invited my Very Inspiring Friend and her kids over for a playdate on very a cloudy summer morning. Our 5 kids together all range in age from 6-11 years, have known each other since birth and all get along really well, but we live about 30kms away from each other, so our visits are never frequent enough. The kids immediately scurried off to begin playing and the moms hunkered down in the kitchen to drink some much-needed caffeine. We shared stories of the summer as small boys dressed as superheroes/ninja’s crept by us under the table, styrofoam nerf pellets soared past the kitchen door, and teeny, tiny pocket doll outfits pleaded for our mom-hands to help them get even tinier dresses on over the disproportionately large doll heads interrupted us sporadically, but for the most part, the playdate was fairly quiet and relaxing for all of us. We ate some lunch, and the kids went outside to paint some rocks. The moms wandered into the living room (which, incidentally, is a designated no-toy room in my house -every other room in the house ends up hosting toys at some point, but I try to keep one oasis in the house), and we were enjoying the quiet beauty of a tidy room when the 2 big girls walked in looking for us. They had finished their rock painting and didn’t know what to do next, and being 11 meant that they were kind of interested in what we grownups were talking about, so they quietly slid into the living room and sat down with us. Then the boys came in too, because they heard that the girls were in there, and before we knew it, all 5 kids were in the living room looking at us moms.

So, usually I implore my kids to go play and leave the adults alone during playdates, but suddenly a spontaneous game of Froggy Murder started (Froggy Murder is a circle game where one person is a silent “murderer” who looks at the other people in the circle and surreptitiously sticks his tongue out at them to “kill” them. Another person standing in the middle of the circle is the “detective” who tries to watch and guess who is murdering the other frogs. You might remember another version of this game called “Wink Murder”). My son loves these circle games he learned to play at school, but which never work at home because there’s usually only 4 of us. But 5 kids & 2 adults can totally play circle Froggy Murder, and we ended up remembering a few more games of the same ilk. We were playing together for over an hour before it became time for them to go home. The guessing games were definitely an unexpected highlight on a dull, cloudy day. Both myself and my Very Inspiring Friend enjoyed the game-playing, and we realized that our kids are reaching a lovely stage in their lives -able to play with their friends without much interference or refereeing, and also super fun to play with all together as a family of all ages.

Given that I’ve dedicated this summer to thinking up good old fashioned activities to occupy our days and nights for a less-structured summer, I honestly don’t think it would have occurred to me to try that kind of game-playing otherwise, so I’m glad a spontaneous froggy murder suggestion came out and got us started. I guess just being open to unscheduled fun allowed for it to unfold that way. My Very Inspiring Friend continues to inspire me, and I’ll be adding that to my summer bucket list under “Cloudy Day Activities”.

What games do you play as a family? Did you play together while you were growing up?