Know More Do More Mondays: you’re IT >> a peek inside the fishbowl

31 May, 2010

Know More Do More Mondays: you’re IT

Posted by andrea tomkins in: - Archive of playground games| - Know More Do More

This week’s activity was a doozy, and I was wholly unprepared:

Organize a scavenger hunt in your neighbourhood and recruit a few families to participate. 83% of youth in Canada report that their neighbourhood is safe for younger children to play outside.

I’m wondering, if the majority of Canadians surveyed think that their neighborhoods are safe, why are there so few kids playing outside? And so few walking to school?

Anyway, back to this past week’s activity… I’m sorry to report I had little time or energy to organize a scavenger hunt. It’s not that it’s hard for me. It’s not beyond my skill set. (In fact, we planned a scavenger hunt - clues and all - for Emma’s 7th birthday party, and it was THE TALK OF THE TOWN for months afterwards. If you can pull this off you will win parenting awards from near and far.)

BUT, due to time and energy constraints I decided to cheat and take the easy way out on this one.

I sent an email around our to a few of our neighbours asking if they wanted to meet us at the park for an after-dinner game of freeze tag instead.

Do you remember freeze tag? Someone is IT and everyone else scatters. If the person who’s IT touches another player, they’re “frozen” until a second player hustles over and crawl between their legs, thus unfreezing them and setting them free. If a player is frozen three times it’s their turn to be IT. To make it easier (mostly because the field in which we were playing was so huge) the person who was tagged three times became IT as well. So the number of people who were IT grew the longer we played. Get it?

A few families couldn’t make it but I was amazed to see that somehow we managed to collect about 18 people (!) for a playdate in the park. The youngest player was about 4, the oldest, well, our age. :) We played one exhausting round of freeze tag at the park. And then another. And then some of the kids ran races. And then we played a different game. And then we gave them a little time on the playground equipment before we all trudged home, sweaty and red-faced.

Good lord. IF THIS DOESN’T GUARANTEE A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL.

With all the lunging and running I did I’m seriously thinking of giving up my gym membership and playing around at the park instead.

It was a success! And so easy.

As for this coming week, the activity is this:

Take advantage of the Ottawa River and the Rideau Canal. Kids who are physically active are less likely to become depressed.

HA! I think I got that one covered. BUT if you have any suggestions about where we should go and what we should see I would love to hear them.

This post is part of the Know More Do More initiative spearheaded by the Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network. KMDM is about empowering parents and inspiring them to take charge of their children’s health by taking easy steps to increase activity levels and improve eating habits. I’m one of two champion families who has been asked to take this challenge. You can join too. Check out the official website for more information. You can also get healthy tips by following @knowmoredomore on Twitter. If you’re blogging about your participation, please let me know so we can cheer each other on!

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