Ravina Sewani

Things you will need: bunch of chits with words written on them How to:Write the main word on the chits along with 5 words which are related to the main word. For example, the main word can be "house". So along with this word on the chit, 5 words related to house, for example, "door, window, kitchen, bedroom, TV" also need to be written on the chit. This activity can be played in teams or just between two children. The aim of the game is to make your partner guess the word without using the actual word and 5 other words listed on the card/paper on which the word is written. If you observe than your kids are struggling explaining the words, you can remove those 5 words from the list to make it easier. Fun fact:To make it more competitive, you can set a timer each drawer gets. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will improve your child’s vocabulary and explanation skills. It will also help them to connect the dots between 2 or more things.It is a word guessing game.

Taboo

You will need nothing for this game. How to:This is a group activity. Instruct the children that any time the leader (an adult) announces, “The floor is lava!", no one can touch/walk on it. The players have to get where they are going by stepping on furniture and anything they can toss on the floor but cannot walk on the floor whatsoever. After a few seconds or minutes the leader can declare the floor safe so that the children can walk normally for a while. And you can declare the floor as lava again as many times as you want.The child to walk on the floor after the floor is declared as lava gets eliminated from the game. To level up the game, you can set up a path to reach up to a certain reward. The child to reach the reward first, wins the game. You can also use mat, cushions, planks (anything that is safe and appropriate according to the age of children) on which children can walk when the floor is declared lava.&nbsp; Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity will enhance your child's alertness and coordination.

The Floor is Lava

Things you will need: boxes of different sizes but more or less of the same shape How to:Give them boxes of different sizes and ask them to stack as many as they can without letting the boxes topple down. Instead of boxes, you can give them anything. The only thing to remember is that all the things should be more or less similar yet be difficult enough to stack up on each other. Let them figure out why their stacked tower is falling. They will gradually be able to stack more things and make a bigger tower of things. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This game will help improve your child’s motor skills and logical thinking skills.

Stack it up

How to:Gather a group of 8-10 children and divide them into two groups. Decide a treasure of your choice and hide it safely at the end point of the game. Design clues for every step of the game. The clues should be easy enough for children to understand yet difficult enough to force them to think. With every clue they unlock, they get closure to the treasure. The team to reach the treasure first, wins the game. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This game will improve their thinking ability. This game also brings with it a lot of fun.

Treasure Hunt

Thing you will need:Large transparent container, toy dinosaurs, water, shells, stones, bowl of hot water, salt, tweezers or something similar which is heavy and can break the ice, blue food colouring (preferably powdered colour)Activity should be done with a group of 5-10 kids. How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them for protection.<ol><li>Fill about 1/3rd of the container with water and freeze it.</li><li>Place a few toys, stones and shells.</li><li>Pour another layer of water above these toys and freeze it again.</li><li>Place remaining toys, stones and shells.</li><li>Pour the last layer of water and freeze it again.</li><li>Place the ice block you prepared out in the open or on a table.</li><li>Mix salt and the blue food colour in sufficient quantity. Sprinkle this mixture on your ice block. You will see that the ice block is starting to melt.</li><li>Pour the hot water over your ice block so that the ice block melts faster.</li><li>Using tweezers break the ice so that you can recover your dinosaur toys, stones and shells.</li><li>Repeat the steps. Add more salt, more hot water, break the ice with tweezers.</li><li>This activity will definitely keep children busy for a good 2 hours. Let them discover how they can recover the toys faster.</li></ol> Note:Carry out this activity in your backyard or veranda so that your house does not get messy. Why does the ice melt by adding salt?Salt helps in melting the ice faster because salt decreases the melting point of ice. The kids also have fun as they see a blue stream of water running down. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity helps children bond well and develop their co-ordination of fine motor skills.

Dinosaur Dig

This activity can be played in a group of 3-5 kids. Things you will need:One small cup, foam shaving cream, big transparent jar, dropper, water, watercolours, science. How to:Make sure that all the steps are carried out by your children. You can keep an eye on them for protection.<ol><li>In a small cup, mix any water colour with some water; you can take 2/3 different colours too or just go with one colour.</li><li>Fill 3/4th of the jar with water.</li><li>Just before beginning the experiment, spray the foam shaving cream in the jar such that it is just a bit above the water.</li><li>Next, pick some coloured water in the dropper and drop it on top of the shaving foam cloud. Observe how the colour passes through the foam cloud and into the water just like rain.</li></ol> What is happening in the activity?Shaving foam acts as a cloud. When the kids drop the colour on the foam, the foam gets heavy with the colour. When the foam is not able to hold the colour any longer, it passes into the water just like rain falls from the cloud. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This is a fun activity where a child can enjoy rain falling from a cloud. You can give them information about natural phenomenon of raining.

Rain Cloud in a Jar

Things you will need: 2 tubs (small broad tubs or containers in which things can be dunked), things to dunk (balls, small toys, soft toys, small boxes, erasers, books, etc) which are safe for children How to:<ol><li>Gather a group of around 8-10 children. Divide them into 2 groups. You can plan this game in the playground or in your backyard.</li><li>At the starting line, make the children stand and give them the things to be dunked in the tubs placed at the finishing line.</li><li>Instruct the children that they have to pick one thing at a time from their stock of things and go and place it in their tub at the finish line.</li><li>Make it clear that they have to place things in their tub only and not in other group’s tub.</li><li>Start the timer and ask the kids to compete against each other.</li><li>Stop the timer after a minute or so and count the things in each tub. The group with the maximum number of things in the their tub, wins the game.</li></ol> Note: Ask the group to think and come up with a solution where they can dunk the things more effectively and quickly. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This game will teach your child how to work as a team in a group and also enhance their communication and social skills.

Dunk It

How to:Gather at least 7-8 children in a park/in a big enough room in the house. Make the kids stand in a circle. Blow up a big balloon. The kids have to push/kick balloon in such a way that it does not touch the ground. They have to keep the balloon in the air for as long as possible. The kid’s who fails to do so, gets out. The game continues until there is one winner. One of the kids from the circle can start by hitting the balloon up. As soon as the first kid hits the balloon, (s)he has to call out a name and that kid will then take the game forward. Every kid who hits the balloon has to call out the next kid’s name so as keep the balloon up in the air.Observe children going crazy watching each other try hard to keep the balloon up in the air. Happy Gaming!

Significance:This activity comes with all the fun and laughter.

Keep the balloon up

Things you will need: big transparent container like a water tub, diver, sand, rocks, shells, pebbles, plastic marine animals, leaves, flowers, blue food colouring or blue water colour How to:With the help of your child(ren) set this activity up as follows:<ol><li>Take the water tub and fill it with water.</li><li>Add sufficient amount of blue watercolour or food colour to give the effect of "deep sea".</li><li>Add the small pebbles and rocks and scoop them over to one side of the basin to make a “shoreline”.</li><li>Then add the large rocks and stack them along the opposite side to form a “rocky cliff and caves”.</li><li>Add flowers, leaves, plastic marine animals, shells, and diver into the tub.</li><li>Let the children have fun with the open end play.</li></ol> Note: Talk to them about the ocean and sea habitats - the animals living in water, their survival. This activity is best performed in groups.

Significance:This activity will introduce to your child the knowledge of water bodies and the life forms living in water.

group participation activities

Activities are an interesting way to teach important life skills to children. Here are a few suggestions for you.