Big Lunch Resourceful Week #4

It’s Thursday already, and you know what that means?
Yes, it’s nearly the weekend.
AND it’s my day for the Twitter Q&A for the Big Lunch Resourceful Week!
And today is all about resourceful entertaining and decorating at your Big Lunch.

I was asked to come up with “a game or activity idea to entertain children at a Big Lunch which is easy to create a home using things already lying around the house”.
And my mind instantly went blank.
So, in the spirit of the “No Man is an Island” theme, I decided to be resourceful, and ask for help! I consulted with the wise, inventive people of Tweetsville, and Facebook-land, and you all amazed me with your wonderful re-use ideas.

Here they are:

• Long jump-on a verge, or even just on the street. You could keep a leader board to up the excitement
• Skittles with empty plastic bottles (+/- decorating)
• Stilt tin can racing-check out this post here I did last year for making tin can stilts. You can get the kids making their own first, before racing, to keep them occupied for longer!
  
• Junk modelling-what it says on the tin. Lay out a table with empty cereal boxes, clean empty yoghurt pots etc etc, some glue and let them go wild. You could set a theme, and have a judging at the end
• Flattened out cardboard boxes and pens/chalks
• Chalks-good old fashioned chalking on the pavement
• Treasure hunt around the street-issue them with a list of things to find eg a red door, a rose bush etc etc
• Frisbee with sweetie tin lids-if your inner H&S exec can cope with this!
• Fish Racing-make tissue paper fish, and use a rolled up newspaper to bash them along with
• The Pea Game-put a pile of dried peas on a plate, and get the kids using a straw to transfer them onto another plate (obviously make sure the peas won’t fit up the straw and choke anyone…)
• Potato Printing-onto paper, cardboard, or even old sheets, to make tablecloths/decorations
• Making seed bombs-check out this tutorial on Red Ted Art for how to make your own
  

  From Red Ted Art

• Fishing-cut out shapes from an old cereal box. At this point you could get the kids to decorate them. Attach paper clips to them, and then dump them in a cardboard box with maybe some shredded paper or similar. Make some ‘fishing rods’ from twigs/pencils etc with string and magnets attached to them, and go fish!
• Cupcake decorating-this is a bit more labour intensive in terms of preparation, but if you got each house to make a batch of 12 cakes, you’d soon have oodles for very little effort. Bit of icing, LOADS of sprinkles and away they go!
• Tug of War-one side of the street against the other
• Swimming noodle javelin-BigSmall has done this at school-it sounds quite fun!
• Tin Can Skittles

That should be enough to keep any street busy, no matter how big!

I know you are all agog to find out what I chose to do for my ‘how-to’ on the Big Lunch Blog.
Well….. you’ll just have to pop over there to find out!
You can also see a hugely cringe-worthy video clip of me giving my Top Tip for a Resourceful Big Lunch here on the Start website…!

Have a great day everyone 🙂