The Japanese habit of omakase (お任せ) when you’re ordering at a restaurant pretty much means, “I’ll leave it up to you”, inviting the chef to be innovative and surprising in the selection of dishes. I try to do it in every city I visit, and apply the idea behind to everything between how I pick my runs, how I pick my food, how I explore cities and how I travel in general. And we use that when planning our kids activities as well. This is the story of our surprise bowl of kids activities.
At home, we have a surprise bowl of kids activities. Every time the kids (or us) gave a great activity idea, we write it down and put it in the bowl. By now, we have a full surprise bowl of kids activities.
Some kids activities in the bowl
- †Movie evening with cushions and mattresses on the floor.
- Sleep in a tent in the garden.
- All four of us sleep in the living room.
- Dance party in the living room.
- Bake a super large cake.
- Build a fort.
- Build a large boat out of paper.
- Build a large fortress with blankets and pillows.
- Upside-down-day – we wake the kids up saying “sleep well”, eat dinner, then have lunch and after having breakfast we put them to bed saying “good morning”.
- …
Every once in a while, when we’re not sure what to do with the kids, we’ll take an activity out of the bowl. Obviously, they get to pick one (without watching of course). Recently, we added a similar “doing”, the wheel of fortune.
It’s a great way to engage the kids in activity ideas and the bowl is now a pretty magical source of new family memories. We have a surprise bowl of kids activities. So, what are your favorite kids activities?
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