What Else Wednesday - Final Episode??

The comments on my What Else Wednesdays posts have slowed to a trickle, so I'm using this Wednesday to take a survey of sorts. If there are enough answers to today's challenge, I'll keep 'em coming. If not, then this weekly challenge will go the way of the wooly mammoth.

Here we go:



What else could this item be used for?

The rules are simple.

• There are no wrong answers - just creative ones
• Add your answer(s) in the comments
• Keep it clean

Three from me: track for a marble maze, siding for a house, a stamp for making fake bulldozer tracks in the snow

1,000 Blank White Cards

I ran across this web page while researching an article I'm writing and it seemed like the perfect kind of thing to share with the creative folks who stop by this site.

A card game that requires players to invent the cards before play can begin? With rules that are relatively random? Just the kind of thing that suits this space!

Check it out here, and then get thee to the store to pick up 1,000 Blank White Cards.

Have fun!

Creation Nation Creativity Awards

All the creative thinking you do could earn you you $5,000 - if you're a child in the U.S. or Canada (excluding Quebec) between the ages of six and 13.

Check out Lego’s second annual Creation Nation Creativity Awards: “Designed to encourage lifelong curiosity and creativity, the LEGO Creativity Awards are an opportunity an opportunity for budding inventors, explorers, creators and dreamers of all kinds to gain recognition for the imaginations that will make them the ‘builders of tomorrow’.”

Children submit a written essay that demonstrates creative ways of thinking their way around everyday challenges. The deadline is Friday, May 23, 2008. Five finalists will win $5,000 each toward their creative endeavors.

Blog Nod: Farm School via GeekDad

Playing with Stuff

I don't normally do book reviews here, but I'm making an exception for Playing with Stuff from Kane/Miller Book Publishers. The activities in this book utilize what you have on hand, rather than requiring a shopping trip for supplies. I love that aspect of it. (If you own Team Challenges, you know that I'm a big fan of recycling and using what's available.)

There are more than thirty Outrageous Games with Ordinary Objects included in this book. When this book arrived, my son insisted that we play Cheese Squeeze immediately. This game entails making holes in a slice of cheese using drinking straws. The person who manages to make the last complete hole is the winner. This would be a great game to occupy kids during that before-dinner starving time.

While the games in this book are not cooperative, Topsy Tumble is one that could easily be altered to work as a team building activity. The original version requires players to place mini-figures on precarious footing, trying not to place the figure that causes all to fall.

To make it a team building exercise, try this:

Hang a pot lid (a flat lid with a handle in the center works best) from heavy string. Give your team an assortment of mini-figures such as Lego people, small soldiers, or Playmobil people. Challenge them to work together to balance as many figures as possible on the lid before they tumble off.

I could see many of the games from this book working as birthday party games or modified to work as team building activities.