My family has started playing a game we like to call Ideas In The Pot. This involves everyone writing down - or drawing - suggestions for fun things to do. We use our colourful felt-tip pens, and sometimes put the list into an actual pot to help us reach a finite amount of options. As we've played this game a few times now, we have a shorter version whereby we simply take turns to tell each other our ideas and just act out throwing them into an imaginary pot. Whichever way we play it, it's proving to be an inclusive and democratic way of planning family time. Be it for an ordinary Saturday or a special holiday - it ensures everyone's choices are taken into consideration.
We played this game just before going on holiday to Wales last week. Here are some of the fun ideas that went in the pot:
Go rock-pooling
Find a secret garden
Have a BBQ on the beach
Make pancakes
Visit a lighthouse
Cross a stream by stepping stones
Try body-boarding
Watch A Room With A View
Go on a cliff walk
Eat chocolate chip Weetabix Minis (chocolate breakfasts are a treat we reserve for holidays)
Go sand-sledging
Explore a ruined castle
Watch Star Wars (Episode IV - A New Hope, obviously)
We all chose ideas with prior knowledge of the location - this being our fourth family holiday in the same place - and I'm pleased to say we got to do most of them.
Of course we found plenty of other fun things to do along the way - some of which will doubtless be chosen for the pot deliberately in the future.
Make a new best friend
Meet some horses
Make potions on the beach
Have a Cowboy Dinner - bangers, beans 'n' bread - as the sun goes down
Paint pebbles on the beach
Listen to lots of Billie Holiday
Make a sand and lolly-stick toy car tunnel
Make a perfect Gin & Tonic
Watch a cricket match in the evening sun
Follow a walk using an OS map
Watch Julie and Julia
Pose Action Man climbing up a stone wall rock-face
So here's to Ideas In The Pot - and holidays of course; I'm already looking forward to our next one.
