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 wheel of fortune for kids – with kids activities.
At home, we have already had a surprise bowl of kids activities. But after IKEA featured a wheel of fortune on their website we could buy, we switched to that. Every time the kids (or us) gave a great activity idea, we write it down and connect it to one of the numbers on the wheel. Some random kids activities we gathered over time:
- 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 spin the wheel and do the activity connected to the numer on the wheel. It’s a great way to engage the kids in activity ideas and the wheel is now a pretty magical source of new family memories. So, what are your favorite kids activities?