Quick and Easy Games

Growing up I remeber playing a few games at my Grandma's house with my cousins. When we couldn’t run around in the living room, and had to just sit there while the adults had their boring conversations we loved to play I spy.

I Spy-

One person would start out as the Spy. The Spy you would look around the room and pick out an object, the smaller the object or less conspicuous, the harder it was. The Spy would tell one thing about what color, size or shape the object was. The goal for the rest of the kids playing was to take turns to try and figure out what it was that the Spy was thinking of, and it had to be something visible. When the kids narrowed it down enough and would guess at what it was and the person to get it correct could then be the spy.  The Spy starts the round by saying “I spy something with my eye…that’s green (for example)” .

I worked in a daycare for a few years and one of the kids was overly rambunctious and would get into trouble as fast as you could turn your back for 10 seconds, he was about 5 years old. I had to figure a way to keep him buy and focused while not utilizing all of my time on just him. He loved the individual attention when I'd hide an object just for him to find.

HOT and COLD -
This game is easy, no clean up needed and really no supplies since you can use anything at all to hide. I remeber I used to play with a little plastic egg when I was at the daycare. If you want to hide a specific item for each child, so that a few can play at a time. As they get close to the obect I like to use varying degrees of hot when they are getting close to finding it and Cold when they are far away. It's great to change it up and get excited when they are really close by saying things like - you're on fire, burning up, the lava has blown out of the volcano! :) and when they are no where near it I'd try to give the motions or expressions of shivering and being frozen cold.  it's fun!