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 runshow I pick my foodhow 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?

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