ideas for active, cooperative kids' games?

[loligo]

Or, spring cannot possibly get here soon enoughI'm the leader of Chuckles' Brownie troop (that's 2nd and 3rd graders). I'm pretty good at coming up with physically active learning activities outdoors when the weather is nice, but I am scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to indoor activities. Here are the parameters I'm working with

Comments

[kirbyfest]

spring cannot possibly get here soon enough.

Truer words were never spoken.

[vom_marlowe]

My mom used to get us old prom dresses at thrift stores, so we could all play princesses. Lots of beads, totally tacky, over the top colors. I know that's not learning, per se, but it went over well. I don't remember what age they are, but it worked for various ages of cousins (of which I have many). We used to just pull the dresses on over clothes most of the time.
On rainy days, when I was a kid, we also used to do folk dancing for gym, square dancing. I was clumsy, but got it pretty quickly, and there was no winning/losing.

[loligo]

Hee! Some of the girls are anti-princess, but if I broadened the range of costumes, that could definitely be a hit. (When we did face-painting, one girl wanted zombie make-up on her face and biker tattoos on her arms. She does *not* do princess. And Chuckles is always an animal when she plays dress-up -- though sometimes she'll be an animal princess *g*.)

[se_parsons]

My Mom was our brownie leader.

We used to do a lot of craft projects. Decoupage is a hit. We made masks out of newspaper shreds and blown up balloons to shape the head on.

You can sculpt paste flowers out of wonder bread and elmer's glue. You color them with tempera poster paint or food coloring. They come out really nice. It's also cheap.

Is there anything larger scale they could build or make? Service is a part of scouting, after all?

Maybe they all crochet squares and make an afghan for an old folks' home or something.

I guess this isn't very active, but you have to stand to do the sculpting.

[loligo]

I personally love arts and crafts, and the girls like it too, in small doses, but they'll rush through whatever the activity is and then start begging to play in the gym or outside. If all the girls had appropriate cold-weather gear, I wouldn't mind going out no matter how cold it is, but I think some of them don't even own boots, let alone snow pants. (They don't have outside recess here when the temperature is below freezing! Which to me is unthinkable; we were outside every damn day unless the windchill was physically dangerous, or there was a thunderstorm.)

A big communal sculpture project might be active enough to keep them engaged....

Two of the girls in particular are tall, muscular, coordinated, and super high energy. They also happen to be best friends. When we do a sit-down activity, by halfway through the meeting they will be on the floor wrestling each other.