For most of the US, the clocks jumped ahead one hour, but for us, it seems like it jumped back a full day. All weekend, we were confused on what day it was. On Sunday, we awoke thinking it was Monday and found that we didn’t have any electricity. We had tons of laundry to do, dishes to wash and emails to write, but we couldn’t do any of it.
I heard the neighborhood kids playing outside and thought this would be a great time to spend some time with them. After some intense negotiating, we finally picked a game to play – Giant Farkle, which was completely new to all of them. It was awesome watching them learn when to keep going and when to stop. During the first practice round, almost everyone lost all their points because they wanted to keep playing and not end their turn. Then, in the actual game, they played very conservatively because they didn’t want to lose any of their hard earned points. To the point where at the end of the game, during the final round, I had to push them to keep going and try to beat the winner’s score. They really didn’t realize that they were going to lose anyway if they failed to keep going.
After that, I created another game using a bunch of 1-liter coke bottles I had saved for just such a purpose and a 4-square ball. Arranging the bottles at the end of our sidewalk in a triangular form, we had our own bowling alley. It was hilarious watching the bouncy ball bounce right over the pins when they decided to throw the ball instead of rolling it down the lane. But the kids had a blast and laughed at the unpredictable movements of the ball.
Next, we did an art project and I gave them a handful of markers and a white-board and then set a timer and told them they had 5 minutes to complete a piece of art. They were so excited and then ran off with my white-board so they could show their art to their moms.
