Not for everyone, but: if you have small kids and are chronically at sea what game to play, buy a durable map of the world (that can be rolled out on the floor) for children, with cute pictures of animals, popular characters, atmospheric phenomena etc. Bonus points if there is enough space to put your own stickers on it, then you can have a stash for a rainy day/sickness. Put the rolled map in a corner where it is out of the way but easy to notice. When you suffer imagination collapse, take it out, think of the kid’s favorite story character and set him wandering. Semiactive game, not for just before bed.
ETA: my son started playing with it sometime after 2.5 yr, simply ‘driving’ toy cars across the map. Then, we began learning what different pictures mean. We’d go to South America for tomatoes, etc. After that, when he had learned several objects, we introduced ‘repetition’. On the next day after rolling out the map, I’d tell him how the Kitten woke his Owner asking for breakfast. ‘What do you want to eat?’ ‘Mt. Kilimanjaro!’ ‘Ooh, trouble. It’s in Africa, we’d have to take a plane. And it is not tasty—there are all those rocks.’ ‘Then I want to eat an iceberg.’ ‘Ooh, trouble. An iceberg is a large piece of ice in the sea near the Pole. It’s cold, you’ll get sick. And it is still too far away—we’d have to take a train.’ [a couple more iterations, but it’s better to change the ‘foods’ day after day then to make the game too long.] ‘Then I want—OATMEAL!’ [cue in triumphant parental grin and waggling eyebrows.] ‘Wonderful! Let’s make it!’ They go into the kitchen, the Kitten sits down at the table and the Owner stands beside the stove. (This part I use to teach him spelling.) The Kitten reads out the recipe (nouns only), like ‘w-a-t-e-r’, the Owner does something with the named thing. [...] They eat. Finis.
After a few times, start encouraging the kid to tell you what ‘Kilimanjaro’, ‘iceberg’, … mean and why you can’t eat them. When you roll out the map, find new things to ‘want for breakfast.’ Show him a real cookbook with colourful illustrations and let him be ‘the Kitten’ - might help if you have to do something in the kitchen—so he can ‘read you the recipe’ while you are busy.
...just don’t expect it to work as Porridge Propaganda.
(The Kitten and Owner are Findus and Pettersson. Lovely books. After we started playing with the map, fanfiction just… evolved. Now they travel all around the world.)
Not for everyone, but: if you have small kids and are chronically at sea what game to play, buy a durable map of the world (that can be rolled out on the floor) for children, with cute pictures of animals, popular characters, atmospheric phenomena etc. Bonus points if there is enough space to put your own stickers on it, then you can have a stash for a rainy day/sickness. Put the rolled map in a corner where it is out of the way but easy to notice. When you suffer imagination collapse, take it out, think of the kid’s favorite story character and set him wandering. Semiactive game, not for just before bed.
ETA: my son started playing with it sometime after 2.5 yr, simply ‘driving’ toy cars across the map. Then, we began learning what different pictures mean. We’d go to South America for tomatoes, etc. After that, when he had learned several objects, we introduced ‘repetition’. On the next day after rolling out the map, I’d tell him how the Kitten woke his Owner asking for breakfast. ‘What do you want to eat?’ ‘Mt. Kilimanjaro!’ ‘Ooh, trouble. It’s in Africa, we’d have to take a plane. And it is not tasty—there are all those rocks.’ ‘Then I want to eat an iceberg.’ ‘Ooh, trouble. An iceberg is a large piece of ice in the sea near the Pole. It’s cold, you’ll get sick. And it is still too far away—we’d have to take a train.’ [a couple more iterations, but it’s better to change the ‘foods’ day after day then to make the game too long.] ‘Then I want—OATMEAL!’ [cue in triumphant parental grin and waggling eyebrows.] ‘Wonderful! Let’s make it!’ They go into the kitchen, the Kitten sits down at the table and the Owner stands beside the stove. (This part I use to teach him spelling.) The Kitten reads out the recipe (nouns only), like ‘w-a-t-e-r’, the Owner does something with the named thing. [...] They eat. Finis.
After a few times, start encouraging the kid to tell you what ‘Kilimanjaro’, ‘iceberg’, … mean and why you can’t eat them. When you roll out the map, find new things to ‘want for breakfast.’ Show him a real cookbook with colourful illustrations and let him be ‘the Kitten’ - might help if you have to do something in the kitchen—so he can ‘read you the recipe’ while you are busy.
...just don’t expect it to work as Porridge Propaganda.
(The Kitten and Owner are Findus and Pettersson. Lovely books. After we started playing with the map, fanfiction just… evolved. Now they travel all around the world.)