Grandma Ideas

I got sidetracked on my last post when I started to write about having a bike-oree for your grandchildren.  I sure hate it when that happens. (Wait. No, I really don’t mind getting side-tracked. I travel down many interesting paths that I wouldn’t normally have taken had I not gotten sidetracked.  Let’s hear it for getting sidetracked.  Hip, hip, hooray!)

Ahem.  Where was I?  Oh, yes. A bike-oree for grandchildren.

First, give your grandchildren crepe paper strips to weave between their bike spokes.  Cut strips that are one inch wide and eight inches long.  Wrap tape around the strips at one end making a pom-pom and tape a pom-pom to the end of each handlebar.

For this activity, you’ll need some chalk and your driveway.  (If you live near a school or a church you could possibly use their parking.)

Draw a path on your driveway.  Have your grandchildren see if they can ride their bike (trike, hot wheels, even rollerblades) while staying within the lines.  When they are fairly successful, time them.  Have a little competition to see which grandchild can do it the fastest.  When that ‘path’ has been conquered, wash it off and draw a more difficult one.

To add more of a challenge, get items to place along the path to turn it into an obstacle course.  Things like boxes or buckets or grandma’s terra cotta flowerpots (especially if they are looking as dead as mine are at the moment). You could even tape balloons to your driveway on your obstacle course.  You could have the grandchildren ride between the balloons — or ride over them to pop them.

Next, give them a balloon and a broom and have them sweep that balloon from one end of the driveway to the other.  You might need to have a grundle of balloons on hand in case they accidentally get popped.  Again, you can time your grandchildren to see who can do it the fastest.  Or divide them into teams and see which team can get the most points by sweeping balloons across the ‘point line’ in 3 minutes.  (You could substitute a light-weight plastic ball for the balloons.)

Drag those boxes back out (the ones that you used for the obstacle course).  Give each child a small basketball, nerf ball, or plastic ball that came with your fat bat.  Have them do ‘drive-by’ baskets where they try to get the ball inside the box.  (Of course you will put the box 3-4 feet away from where your grandchildren will be riding.  Of course.)

Play ‘bike limbo’ where grandma and grandpa hold a broom and the grandchildren see if they can ride their bike under the broom.  The grandparents will lower the broom a little bit each time making it a wee bit more challenging for the grandkids.

Give your grandchildren a ping pong ball.  Set out a wide-mouth bottle, shortening can, or empty oatmeal box. See if you grandchildren can drop the ping pong ball into the container as they ride past it.

Get out your old embroidery hoop or cut rings out of cardboard or see if you can find some plastic rings at your local dollar store. Put out a 2-liter pop bottle.  Have your grandchildren drop the ring over the bottle as they ride their bike past the bottle.  See who can put the most rings over the bottle in one minute.

Here’s something that you can try if you’ve got a little bit older grandchildren.  (Older than what? you ask.  I dunno.  Just older . . .) Have two grandchildren ride toward each other.  As they pass, see if they can give the other person a ‘high five.’

Drag those boxes out for yet another activity.  And the broom.  Gotta have the broom for this activity.  Find something that you can put on top of the box — another box, an empty 3 liter pop bottle, that type of thing.  Something that could be ’swept’ off the box — not too easily but not too hard either.  Then, have your grandchildren ‘joust’ by riding past the box trying to knock that item off the box.

Does grandpa have any wood on hand?  Say a piece of plywood and a short piece of a two-by-four?  Put the piece of plywood over the two-by-four.  This will be a ‘jump.’ Have your grandchildren ride over the jump.

Well, this ought to keep them (and you) busy for a little while.  Do you have any ideas that could be added to this bike-oree?  If so, I’d love to hear about them!

So the title of this post is Bike-oree (patterned after the word camporee — if you’ve ever been around Boy Scouts, you know what I am referring to).  See, these ideas are based around bikes instead of camping.  Get it?

But, before I really get into what I want to say, I want to bring your attention to a comment from Grandma Shelley that she made on my post about invitations to grandma camp.  She indicated that she has dozens of ideas on her Grandma’s Little Pearls site under Grandkids Camp Out.  And she does!

Check out her invitations and schedule for 2009, her sand art craft, and her pine cone critter craft, the butterfly habitat craft, and the hand washing station.

Now if that isn’t enough to give you ideas (and, for me, a severe case of depression because I’m not as creative as she is . . .), she also holds a Christmas Day Camp.  There’s the Christmas Reindeer Cupcake craft, the snowman fridge magnet, the gingerbread house ornament, the light strand, and the Christmas picture frame.  (Grandma Shelley, will you adopt me as one of your grandchildren?  Please?  Please?  Please?)

My intention of this posting was to talk about having a bike-oree for your grandchildren.  I got sidetracked (like my kids always harass me about . . .) in reading Grandma Shelley’s site.  So, I’ll post my ideas next time.  Promise.  Well, maybe.  Who knows what will happen next time . . .?

And if Grandma Shelley’s Google ranking doesn’t skyrocket into outer space because of all of the links that I have here to her site, I will be a monkey’s uncle.  Er . . . aunt . . .

Now, excuse me while I go back to reading more ideas from Grandma’s Little Pearls.  (I highly recommend that you check out her ideas, too.  Plan on spending several hours reading it . . .)

My daughter-in-law sent me a fun link. It’s to a reproducible file of an invitation to Grandma Camp and other fun tags.  You can download it here.  (It is from the site The DIY Dish run by identical twin sisters that look like they could be Marie Osmond’s daughters!)

Keep your eyes peeled as you look at this reproducible.  There is a link to directions on how to make a paper bag book — on the sewing machine no less!  (Can’t get much more creative than that!)

Thanks so much, Pamela, for sharing this with me!

Do any of you have links (or ideas) that you can share about Grandma Camp?

Grandchildren love to play in water — whether in the tub, in the swimming pool, or in outdoor games.

I know that I’ve recently shared water ideas.  You need a few more, don’t you?  It’s still summer.  It’s still hot.

And I still have some ideas . . .

Suds Stand
Want a wet twist on the ol’ lemonade stand on the corner?  Try a scaled down car wash theme and do a ‘bike ‘n toy’ wash.  On a large poster board, design and color a bike wash sign.  Tape it to the handlebars of a bike. Get a huge bucket of sudsy water, plunk it down on the sidewalk outside grandma’s house, put the bike/sign nearby, and offer to wash bikes and toys.  You could wash them for a small fee — or for free.

If you don’t have any takers, have your grandchildren wash some toys from grandma’s toy closet or her sandbox.  They’ll have lots of wet, sudsy fun and keep occupied (and cool) on a hot summer day.

Water Tag
Gather up your grandchildren for an old fashioned game of tag — with a twist.  Give the person who is ‘it’ a cup of water.  When ‘it’ splashes water on another player, that player is now ‘it.’  You might want to have a bucket of water nearby for handy cup refills.

Water Balloon Catch
Cut away a section from a plastic milk jug leaving the handle and the lower part of the jug (as a catch receptacle).  Fill lots of water balloons with your nifty Water Bomb Factory.  (You do have one, don’t you?)  Then, play catch seeing how many times you can catch a water balloon with your milk jug mitt before the balloon breaks.  (You’ll want to make sure that the edges of your milk jug doesn’t have any rough sticky-outy points that could pop the balloon.)  You could also see how far apart you can stand and catch the water balloon before it breaks.

Super Soaker Squirt Ball
You will need a super soaker squirt gun for each person and one small inflatable ball.  Determine goal lines for each person/team.  The object is to move the ball across the goal line using only water squirted from the super soaker.  (No kicking or hitting the ball . . .)

Do any of you have other fun water activities that you have done with your grandchildren?