A Game for Small Spaces

At one point, we had four children in a two bedroom apartment. It was very cramped. And sometimes, the kids had plenty of energy, but we were not able to drop everything and take them to the park, especially since the good park was an hour away. We had to figure out some way to let them burn off energy in our tiny apartment. We have since moved to a big house, and I am grateful for it every day, but sometimes you just have to make do. thus, we came up with the animal game. 

Our children were all babies and toddlers at the time, and this worked great for us. Mom or Dad sat at the end of the hallway, and called out an animal name, and the kids all had to run down the hall as that animal and sometimes back or sometimes they would get a new animal at the other end, whichever their attention span called for. if we said butterfly, they had the flap their wings, if we said bear, they had to be on all fours, and if we said kangaroo, they had a hop. It held their attention well, and burned off their energy.

My message in telling you this is twofold. First, it is a fun game you can play. But second, is that if you are struggling for space and time like we were, there is hope and it can get better. We were househunting, and our options were miserable. We found our home, purely through the grace of God. So when things don’t look good on their own, always pray and never lose hope.