I was going to post this in the games forum, but that seems dominated by sports/WoW type talk, so maybe the more parent-y type people would see this here.
I’m trying to come up with some creative, interactive ways to keep in touch with my long-distance nieces/nephews. Talking on the phone is fine but you may know what it’s like to try to talk to a 6 year old who’s distracted or not really interested in focusing on a catch-up conversation with Auntie Xanthous!
I recently had a lot of fun with the Flat Stanley project which was a classroom project of my nephew’s (too much fun almost- I’m a graphic designer and really get into full creative mode with stuff like this!) I took my niece’s teddy bear to Europe and did a similar project with it, photographing it on the train and at the Eiffel tower, etc, and writing a short story about its adventures. Regardless to say, the kids squealed with delight at receiving these packages in the mail. And now I’m hooked.
I’d like to start some kind of regular fun interactive project with the kids, perhaps on the educational side, and need some ideas.
So far I have these ideas:
• Mad Libs type thing where I send a postcard (or email) asking them to fill in words (“name an animal, name a color, etc” for the younger kids, “noun, verb, etc” for the older kids) and then I take their answers and plug them into a funny story.
• Crop in on a photo of a familiar thing and have them guess what it is
Any ideas for some fun long-distance projects/games I can do with 3 to 11 year old kids?
I put a lot of creative effort into trying to entertain my nephews from afar. Wrote on strange or funny postcards, writing with puns and rebuses and jokes. Made several e-cards with homemade cartoons. Created a couple of crossword puzzles with their names as clues and answers… Entertained me and just made them shrug and go back to whatever they were doing. Some things aren’t meant to be, and my becoming favorite out-of-state uncle was one of them.
Oooo…crossword puzzles…I love making up crossword puzzles- thanks! I have the luck of having nieces/nephews (well, my sister’s kids, anyway) that love getting stuff in the mail, and I’ve been lucky (at least so far) that they have liked participating. For instance, when my 5 year old niece saw that I had “gone on an adventure” with her teddy bear, she decided she wanted to create her own adventure with my teddy bear (we traded bears for fun), and now I’m (eagerly) awaiting a package from her to see what she came up with. So I will work at this for as long as we are so far apart- it’s the closest thing (besides phone calls) to actually being there and playing with them!