Wednesday at the Kitchen Table: Fun with your table!

How many adventures can you possibly have with a kitchen table and chairs?  Endless!  Especially if you use a little imagination and some common household objects.

The kind of games my children play around and under the kitchen table involves turning the chairs around and pushing the backs against the table to create cages for a zoo, or a spaceship, or a jailhouse for villains. 

For the Zoo game one child or more dresses up as a tiger (and orange shirt, or face paint, or shaggy brown wig would work - we have an old tiger costume from Halloween) and the other child(ren) play the zookeeper(s) who take care of the tiger(s).  The tiger(s) escapes and there is much whooping and hollering as the children chase each other around to either avoid capture, avoid being eaten by the tiger(s), or avoid having the tables turned and the zoo keeper(s) getting put in the cage. 

For the spaceship game, lay a chair down so the legs are under the table.  These will be the "steering" sticks and missile launchers.  Get a couple of #10 cans and several small balls of various sizes for the "fuel" that has to be changed out after a major battle. One can being the re-charger can and the other the engine of the spaceship. Other variations include using the balls as actual missiles, but I would suggest you use ping pong balls.  You'll need a "food processor" which can be another chair in it's correct position where food can appear once the child places his/her order.  Of course, you'd be supplying the lunch or snack on a plastic plate.  An old keyboard can make an excellent addition to the "spaceship" as well as making tin-foil space helmets and pajama spacesuits accessorized with tin-foil badges and medals.

Shoeboxes hold the treasures you find on alien planets!

I made the helmets a little too tall.

For the Jailhouse game it's superheroes vs. super villains.  Turn the chairs around to make a jail like the zoo game, and have pillow cases available for capes, and tin foil wristbands and anklets if desired.  Sometimes my superheros have swords and we use foam tubes that we cut in half and wrap one end with duct tape for a handle. Once when we studied about Greek Mythology, it was the gods vs. gods and we used cardboard lightening bolts wrapped in tin foil, cardboard shields wrapped in tin foil and decorated with markers, and foam swords.

Next Wednesday I'll share some ideas to keep sensory seeking SPD kids busy at the table.  They LOVE this game.