Dress Up Sparky Game

 I'm always on the lookout for more creative, cooperative, fun games for Sparks.  This year I saw a game on Oriental Trading for dressing up a character in the armor of God and thought, that would make a great Sparks game!

Several hours of work later and here it is - the Dress Up Sparky Game!

The concept is pretty simple - each kid gets a Sparky guy card, on their turn they roll to discover the category they will pick from to add a costume piece to their card.  If they roll a category they already have, they have the choice of swapping it out or keeping what they've got.  The game ends when all of them have dressed their Sparky guy.  I'm hoping it will be a hit.

Since I have a pretty large club, I made enough for 10 kids to play at a time on each team.  If you have a smaller club you won't have to print or laminate as much as I did.  I printed these from my local UPS store and it only cost me $5 per team, which I thought was pretty good.  I cut out, laminated, and cut out again for everything so it should last for years of play.

Want a set for your Sparks?  All the files I made are linked below :)

Sparky Guy Cards

Sparky Dress Up Outfits

Game Spinner

Dinosaur Travel Playset

I LOVED LOVED LOVED the dinosaur playmat that Fun at Home with Kids made.  I made one just like it for our big dinosaurs, but I wanted a smaller version for traveling or church.  So far I have made two of these travel sized playsets.  The first was in one of those tins that you get cookies in at Christmas.  That was for my second cousin.  Then I wanted to make one for my nephew, but the traveling he does is mostly flying and I figured the TSA would have a FIT with a metal container :p  So I got one of those pencil cases for 97 cents at Target.  It was a little smaller but it worked great!
I got the dinosaurs from Amazon but one of those Safari toobs of dinosaurs will work too.
I don't have any patterns or anything - I basically just made it up as I went along.  I used the same basic ideas as Fun at Home with Kids though.  LOTS of hot glue :)  But it was totally worth it and it really holds up well to little boy play!

Here it is by itself

Here is with about ten dinosaurs (I will use the rest for gifts & prize box awards)

Here is a different angle and action shot as my son is closing the lid!

And this is closed.  I covered the box in a sheet of duct tape so you couldn't see the hot glue through the clear plastic.

Unfortunately Courtney

I was reading Kathryn's blog the other day and she was talking about how a friend of hers did a search with "Unfortunately (their name)" in Google and wrote a little story with the results that popped up. I thought this sounded like fun & I am totally burned out after writing 32! articles this past weekend. (I can tell you all kinds of cool facts about lobsters, the Foreign Exchange market, real estate, buying a boat, internet scams, etc. I am a plethora of weird information :)

The greatest disappointment, perhaps, is that one can imagine an interesting play here; unfortunately, Courtney didn't write it, and one can only wonder...

Unfortunately Courtney was afraid of the photographer and cried.

That's the NBA and unfortunately Courtney is getting a little of that right now.

Unfortunately, Courtney just doesn't have time to surf during the school week.

Unfortunately, Courtney cries at everything

Boo hoo :)

Having fun...

I made a "virtual me" on Caress' website.  I only wish I looked this good :)  Really makes me want leather pants though...

Found this fun game via the IE Mommy.  She has partnered with Caress for a great giveaway going on right now...if you're interested :)

Other than the incredibly great body, expensive clothes/accessories, & perfect skin...this pretty much looks like me :p  It's fun to play with anyways.