Skyping with Grandchildren

Almost three years ago, I shared some ideas of activities that grandmothers could do over Skype with grandchildren. Those ideas were for toddler-aged grandchildren.

Last week, I got an e-mail from a grandmother in Italy asking about some things that she could do to strengthen her relationship with her grandchildren that lived in Australia. (Boy, that’s a lot of miles that separates her from her precious grandchildren!)

I came up with a couple of ideas that I thought that I would share here with everybody.

First, play a simplified version of Pictionary with your grandchild. One of you will draw something and the other one guesses. You can use a kitchen timer or a timer from another game if you want to. If your grandchildren are fairly young (I’d say under 8 years old) you might not want to use a timer at all . . .

I’ve created a simple list of pictionary words that you can use. E-mail the list to your grandchild. Both of you print up the list and cut the words into strips of paper. Turn the strips of paper face down. One person selects a word from her pile and then draws it. The other person guesses it. When the other person correctly guesses it (or the time runs out), it’s the other person’s turn to draw something.

A twist to this game is to use Play-Doh instead of drawing the word. Both of you could select a paper word strip and try and create it using Play-Doh. You can set the timer if you would like to add a little challenge to your activity.

Another idea would be to play Twister. Grandma, you flip the spinner and your grandchild would be the one who put her hand or foot on the plastic mat. (If you happen to be limber and agile enough, I guess you could take a turn placing your hands and feet on the plastic mat!)

There are a couple of other games that you could play with young grandchildren.One is Candyland and the other is Chutes and Ladders.

Only your grandchild needs the gameboard. Your grandchild will make the moves for both of you on her game board.

If you have older grandchildren, you can play the classic games of Clue, Sorry, The Game of Life, Boggle, Yatzee, or Battleship. With some of these games, it probably wouldn’t be necessary for both of you to have the game. It would probably work out okay if just your grandchild had it.

If you had several grandchildren, you could play games that work best for more than two players like Taboo or Scategories.

I know that playing games like this over Skype isn’t the same as being in the same room together. Nothing can replace the real-in-person experience. But sometimes grandmothers have to settle for the next best thing. Thank goodness we have technology to help us stay connected!