Play Clap Games With Your Kids
A few months ago, I went to Disneyland with a big family for a week. If you’ve ever been to Disney, you know that roughly 75 percent of the experience revolves around anticipation. A few days later, in a particularly long line, my 9-year-old niece turned to me and said, “Would you like to play a game?” She then taught me how to play a clapping game calledConcentration 64, which looks something like this:
Why 64? I have no idea. But I’ll say it’s harder than it sounds to come up with categories on the spot, and even for an adult, clap games are still pretty darn fun. By the time we started the ride, our hands were red with applause and we spent an hour laughing while everyone around us was bored.
I remembered playing other clapping games as a kid, so I started looking a bit to refresh my memory and arm myself with other games to teach her. I found this one – apparently called Tic-Tac-Toe – which was my favorite as a kid. (I didn’t even know it had a name. In fact, I’m pretty sure we thought we came up with this.)
Anyway, here’s how we did it:
But it turns out that there aremore complex variants with words and many possible endings:
This one called Slide was another favorite among my friends, and its job was to see how high you can count before you screw up:
And then there’s TheSailor Out to Sea , which I remember playing a lot with my mom (I honestly warn you that this song will probably get stuck in your head for the rest of the day):
Yes, andDown Down Baby was also a support:
Consider this your new (but old-fashioned) way to while away the screen time and work with your kids on hand-eye coordination.