Inclusive Lockdown Games

Hi, everybody. Ken here. If you’re stuck around the house. Here are some easy to organize games and activities for children of all ages, just using bits and pieces you might find lying around. Here we go.

Here’s a great one to start. Put lightweight balls in plastic bags and bind them with tape. If you don’t have any balls, then use paper or other plastic bags. Then attach the balls with string or twine to your rotary dryer. Using an old bat or racket, try and keep the balls spinning. If you don’t have an old bat or tennis racket. Just use your hands.

How good is this?

There’s loads of games you can do with just an old newspaper and some tape. This is a really old newspaper. The Beatles broke up.

With a couple of sheets of newspaper and some tape, you can make paper balls that you can use and loads of fun games. Like, see how many balls you can get in the hoola hoop. Challenge yourself if you get one and move farther away if you miss go a bit closer. If you don’t have a hoola hoop use a cardboard box or lots of different sized boxes.

Or you can use a sheet of newspaper. Hold it down with pebbles from the garden. Or just stick it down with industrial tape. I reckon I need some practice. Or do I? Use different kinds of targets in different ways. Can you get through the hoop and into the box? Using garden twine or string create a trail round the garden. Use the landscape and objects in the garden to make your trail. Make sure you put the string at different heights in order to include tall and not-so tall people. And you are good to go. Incorporate some obstacles in the trail. Oh, my back! Or every so often. You can hang a little treat for people to find.

Yumi.

If you want the trail to be a bit more visible, then attach little flags using tape. If you really want to challenge yourself, try wearing eye shades. If you don’t have eye shades, then just use a scarf or a piece of cloth. And feel your way round looking for those treats. Here’s another game using the paper balls. Paint some of them red and some of them blue using cheap poster paint, but leave one of them unpainted as the target ball. Now you’re ready to play the great Paralympic sport of boccia. The aim is simple, if you’re playing red, you try to get your put your boccia balls closer to the white target ball than the person who’s playing with the blue.

You can play the boccia balls in different ways. For example, throwing. Or you can bowl them along the ground. You can even push or kick them with your foot. You score a point for every one of your colour balls that ends up closer to the target ball than your opponent. Notice that in Boccia you don’t take turns. The colour that is farthest away keeps playing until it gets nearer. Now, who’s closest here? Blue. Red, blue.

But it’s raining and you’re stuck indoors. Then a few lids from jars and a smooth surface and you can play some great tabletop games. Print off some numbers or just draw them with marker pens and see how many points you can score. What about tabletop tenpin, using some empty plastic water bottles. Or maybe the great Scottish winter sport of curling. Print a target off the Internet or just make one using marker pens. The jar lids become curling stones and you score a point for each one of your stones you get closer to the center of the target than your opponent. But if you’re on your own, you don’t have an opponent, unless. Unless you play against your evil twin. In this game, you have a coloured ball each. If you hit the evil twins ball, you score. If you miss, he scored.

Blast! Get in.

OK, that’s it. More again soon. Don’t forget to check out The Inclusion Club, www.theinclusionclub.com, where you’ll find all sorts of interesting videos and stories about how to include disabled children and adults in physical activity and sport. Of course, I’m not forcing forcing it down your throat. I mean, I’m not one for just unabashed commercialism. I think that’s just selling out. But, you know, it’s up to you completely.

Thanks