A Walk Down Memory Lane…

My parents came to visit us recently and my Mum brought over some very old memories from my childhood. I didn’t even realise she kept them!

The Cricket Game

The Cricket Game

 

I’m not sure if you ever played with this but I doubt they make anything like it any more. Aristotle and I re-enacted a match between Australia and England recently (he was Australia and I was England). It was a close match with England losing by just 8 runs! Aristotle was really fascinated by how the game worked and was puzzling over the mechanism. Yup. They sure don’t make ‘em like this any more…

Aussie Books

Old Favourites

Now who remembers these?

These were a special edition series that was selling at the post office and they came with bookmarks (which I don’t have any more, unfortunately). Most of these books aren’t even in publication any more so I’m glad I still have them to introduce to Aristotle.

It was nice to be able to bring something from my childhood that you don’t get any more that I could share with my boys.

Do you have any old toys and books that aren’t easily available any more that your children are playing and reading now? Tell us about them…

 


 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Good Old Fashioned Games

Aristotle’s school is doing a theme on toys – specifically: old-fashioned toys. You know… the kind we used to play when we were kids. So we’ve been playing a few “new” oldies ourselves…

We’ve moved off Dinosaur Chess and onto a real chessboard:

chess

We chose a magnetic set so we could take it along with us, or “pause the game” without having to worry about the pieces falling over when we have to move the board around the house. Aristotle’s been playing against Daddy as part of their “father and son bonding” sessions now that Aristotle is growing up and reaching the second phase of his life where he looks to Daddy to emulate (Biddulph in “Raising Boys“).

The boys have been having a bit of fun with the magnetic letters on the fridge, so I was inspired to dig out the Scrabble set. It was a tad ambitious, so we cycled back a step to Scrabble Slam! to practice with our four letters words first.

Scrabble Slam

Aristotle’s giving it a good go. Hercules is only interested in spelling his own name and “Mummy”. Occasionally, he might be interested to spell the titles of the other members of the family, too.

Aristotle’s really taken to his card games, so we’re going to give Clue: Suspect a go. It’s the card deck version of the board game Cluedo which I really enjoyed playing as a child. I thought it was interesting to see that quite a number of board games from my childhood have turned into card games. We have Battleship, Monopoly, Sorry! Revenge, Pictionary, and loads more. Of course there are also the golden oldies, like Top Trumps, Uno (which comes in many different themes to delight any young fan), Old Maid, Go Fish!, and who could forget Snap!? Most of these games can be played with a regular deck of cards – that’s what we did. In our version of Uno, 10′s were “change the suit”, 7′s were “reverse”, Aces were “skip”, and 2′s were “pick up 2″.

Recently, Aristotle’s aunt bought him a new board game called Snake Lake and it reminded me that Aristotle’s getting into that fun age where he’s old enough to understand how to play a lot of the board games now. Of course, Hercules is still our limiting factor because he’ll want to “play”, too, and that usually means we can’t play.

Since we’re on to “old fashioned” games… Another one we still play is “hide and seek”. Now tell me a child who doesn’t love “hide and seek”? Of course, Hercules still hasn’t quite mastered the art of hiding well because he gives himself away every time! Sometimes, we make it interesting by hiding a special object and give “hotter”/”colder” clues. If we’re feeling really creative, we make a map and play the treasure hunt game.

Another game I’d like to dig up from my childhood and introduce to the boys is Twister. Now there’s an idea for a party game…


 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Birthday Party Themes: Jurassic Park Dinosaurs – Happy Birthday Aristotle!

It was Aristotle’s birthday recently. We had it at the same jungle gym as we did for Hercules.

One of the ironies of being a parent is that you find yourself breaking every promise you made before you had children. One of those promises was – no birthday parties at jungle gyms. Now both boys have had one at a jungle gym. I blame Daddy for being the weak link because I held fast through all of Aristotle’s pleadings (for many friends from school had birthday parties at jungle gyms so he was desperate to have one, too). I think it was because Hercules missed out on a celebration for his first and second birthdays – the first because Daddy’s grandma had just passed away and we were in mourning; the second because Hercules fell sick. So when Hercules was turning 3, Daddy decided to make up for it with a special do at a jungle gym. And since Hercules got one at a jungle gym, we had to be fair to Aristotle and have his at a jungle gym, too. So that’s the long of the short on how we ended up with jungle gym birthday parties for the boys…

The plan is for this to be the first and last, but I have learned as a parent – never say “never”…

So I asked Aristotle what theme he wanted for his party and he said: Jurassic Park. So dinosaurs it was. Without going overboard, here are some of the elements we came up with to give the party that “Jurassic” feeling:

Theme Image

Jurassic Park Entrance

Invitation Text

“Our little paleontologist will set out on an expedition [insert date, time and venue]. Please join him on this adventure to celebrate his [insert birth age] birthday.”

Party Bag

The concept was a dinosaur survival kit which included:

  • dinosaur repellent (which is really bubble solution)
  • dinosaur coprolite (in other words, fossilised dino poop – which is really a box of raisins)
  • dinosaur fossil fuel (which is really a packet of Milo drink)
  • play dough and dinosaur mould
  • dinosaur toy
  • chocolate crispy with dinosaur picture
  • birthday balloon

Some of the party bags had different contents because we had a few late RSVPs.

Party BagParty Bag Contents

 

If you have the budget for it, you can even buy dinosaur-themed party bags instead of making your own.

There are also quite a lot of other “dinosaur” themed party favours you can include in a party bag for dinosaurs if you have a bit of time to look around for them or order them online:

Party Games

  • Pass the Dinosaur Egg (which is really “pass the parcel”) with dinosaur books marks as mini prizes
  • Dinosaur Statues (which is really “musical statues”)

There were other games that we contemplated, such as the dinosaur piñata and pin the head on the dinosaur, but since the kids were young, I figured we should keep the games short and sweet so we didn’t lose their attention.

Party MC

Our party MC was T-Rex (my SIL who kindly dressed up in a dino costume for the kids when I went to her in tears because I didn’t have an MC). She did such a fantastic job, she was almost hired on the spot for another birthday party.

When it comes to parties for little kids, a good MC can be the difference between a party success or flop.

Party Music

We managed to find some dino music from Youtube, including some of our favourites:

  • I am a Paleontologist – They Might Be Giants
  • Dinosaur Trains Theme Song
  • T-Rex – Dinosaur Train
  • Dinosaur ABCs – Dinosaur Train
  • Hungry Herbivore – Dinosaur Train
  • Dinosaur Dance
  • Dinosaur Song
  • Perry the Parasaurolophus – David Cagle
  • Quetzalcoatlus – David Cagle

Hercules’ new favourite song to sing is now Dinosaur Dance.

Birthday Cake

What’s a birthday without the cake? Our resident chef made this beautiful Jurassic Park Theme cake complete with chocolate chip dinosaur eggs (which were simply scrumptious!) for our birthday boy:

Jurassic Cake

 

If you aren’t lucky enough to have a chef for a relative, some budget alternatives might be:

It was a lot of fun planning for the party. Execution, on the other hand, is clearly not my forte. Nevertheless, the kids did not notice the hiccups and appear to have had a great time. Well, you can’t really go too far wrong with a party at a jungle gym when you have a bunch of 6 year olds.


 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

 Powered by Max Banner Ads