March Break Mind Games

March Break can feel like endless hours if your kids aren't busy. I don't mind my kids parking themselves in front of the tv in the morning. But once the day begins, the tv goes off. Problem is I find myself running out of ways to play.

Sure, we stock up on toys, paints and board games. Our shelves are bulging. Still, I often end up with a couple of bored kids begging for tv. Electronic toys keep them amused for five minutes. Worse, the amount of noise they give off can make any mother mad.

My six year old son loves paint by numbers. The problem - his three year sister wants to be entertained the exact time Josh needs my help to do his art. We've had good success with a couple of board games, Zingo (Discovery Toys) being the big winner, but age difference makes it hard to sit down as a family to play.

Since becoming a yummy mummy, I find myself depending on my mummy network to problem solve. This time I searched my blackberry for gal pal Karen Halpern. She runs Thumbprint Adventures, a creative play studio which hosted my sons fifth birthday party. Her focus on imagination and creativity made his Superhero Adventure bash a real smash. I was amazed how fifteen little kiddies could be entirely engaged for forty five minutes with only a few props and their imaginations. I often can't keep two kids focused for ten minutes.

I promised Karen a latte if she would come by and teach me her secrets to keeping little minds stimulated.

As soon as she sat down, she pointed out problem number one. An obscene number of toys are crammed into our toybox. She told me to remove half of them, and hide the rest. Let the kids rediscover their buried treasures. Karen says an easy way to entice a child to play with a toy is move its location. In fact, nurseries and daycares use this technique to get the biggest bang out of their limited toy stock.

Toys are unnecessary according to Karen. A mom herself, she rarely buys typical playthings. Instead, she collects multi-purpose pieces like sponges stored in buckets which can be used to build pyramids, roads, forts and anything your little one's brain desires.

Unlike most adults, Karen keeps the kid inside her alive. She reminds me to forget what something is supposed to be. A blanket, for example. "Pretend you're in a fort. Then you're at a picnic, now the blanket's an ocean and you're swimming. Watch out, theres a shark!" I was getting the point.

Treasure hunts are big in Karen's house. "Find something red!" she would yell out. Suddenly little feet are racing around her place on a quest for red things. I forgot to ask how she manages to get everyone to clean up all the red stuff at the end of the game.

On her way out, Karen reminded me that playing lets kids learn in new ways. When my son came home from school, I invited him and his sister to go on a magic carpet ride. He looked at me like I was from another planet. I threw down an old blue blanket and said, "Jump on!" In a blink of an eye, we were flying past the television, all grinning ear to ear.