Friday Funnies

Happy Weekend!

Friday Funnies

Whether your week was fantastic or lousy---it's time to celebrate FRIDAY!  Here are some funnies to start your weekend!

Friday Funnies

Happy Friday! Here are your funnies for the week (#3 is my favorite!).

9 Awesome Lego Activities {for when you're stuck inside!}

*Links may be affiliate links.  See full disclosure here.

Stuck inside with kids who are bored? Whatever your reason for needing to entertain your kids (I'm updating this post during the COVID-19 pandemic and we can't go anywhere and do anything) we've all dealt with bored kids who won't quit whining/arguing/talking.  Regardless of the situation, I've got 9 lego activities that will help keep your kids entertained...at least for awhile! 

Bonus: Several of these we did at one of my sons' birthday parties a few years ago.  They were a big hit!  So if you have a LEGO themed birthday party coming up (in a post-pandemic world), you may be able to use a lot of these activities/games to pop some more fun into your LEGO party.

1. Build cars (10 min time limit?  Who can complete first?) then race them!  

Take a piece of thick poster board ($1 at dollar tree) and prop against a coffee table to make a little ramp race track for your LEGO vehicle. When we played this at my son's birthday party, we used Lego car kits (similar pictured below) and had 2 teams. They had to race to build their LEGO vehicle and then race them.

2. Lego Boat

Who can build a Lego boat that floats? Can you devise a sail and blow on it to make it go?

3. Guess how many

Put some LEGO blocks in a clear jar and have your child estimate how many there are. Then take them out and count.  Child can put Legos in the jar and then have YOU estimate. (Bonus: This is also a sneaky way to build number sense).  For a birthday party twist: the winner gets to keep the jar of LEGOs!

4. Lego Cake DIY your own with a square cake pan and 4 cupcakes.  If you are anything like me, your attempt at a DIY Lego cake is not going to look professional.  Guess what? Your kids don't care.  They're stuck at home and you made a Lego cake with them.  Coolest Mom Ever.

5. 100 Contest

Each person gets 100 Legos and 10 minutes to build the tallest tower (or longest structure?) they can.  

6. Use a camera

Pose mini-figs to act out a short story.  Then scroll through the pics and retell your story! If your child is a bit older and enjoys tech things they could use an ipad or device to create a stop motion movie with their Lego minifigs.  My younger son has done this and it turns out pretty cool!

From CollectibleMiniFigs.com

7. Watch

The Lego Movie (of course!)

8. Build a Lego Catapult

Launch mini marshmallows.  How far can they go?

9. Charades

Use your charades game cards but instead of acting out the picture, you will BUILD the picture.  So if you drew "television" you will now build a tv out of Lego blocks while the others try to guess.

*********************************************************************

Need Legos?  I love the box of bricks you can get that are not part of a licensed kit.  Great for open ended, creative fun!  Also: Does anyone have one of these cinch sack things for cleanup?  I'm thinking we may need to carpet our entire living room out of one! LOL

     

Another SWAGO at Swagbucks

This is a post sponsored by Swagbucks. They are giving me bonus SB in exchange for making sure YOU know about using SWAGO to earn more points for yourself. Win/Win.

Remember how I use Swagbucks to earn giftcards to Target, Sephora, Amazon, etc?  In 2015 I made over $400!  And in 2017 I made $334!  If you want to jump on the Swagbucks train and start earning your own gift cards, now is a great time because they have a special promotion called "Swago" that starts on Monday! 


Swago is like Bingo--you have a board and you cover a square when you follow the directions inside the square. Each Swago is different but the squares are often things like "Click to visit this store"  or "Earn points through searching the web"  or "Answer the Daily Poll."

Usually on swago boards I find a few that are tasks I don't want to do but enough others to still get a "bingo" and redeem my board for some bonus points.

If you're thinking of trying Swagbucks, this is a great chance to learn all about how the site works and earn bonus points while doing it, meaning you can get more gift cards faster. 

Here are a few tips: 

• Each square on your Swago Board will contain an action item to complete. They can be anything from getting a search win, completing a survey, or just visiting one of our popular stores!
   
• Once you complete the action item in a particular square the square will change color signifying the action item is complete.
   
• You have until 3pm ET on Monday, January 15th to mark off as many squares as possible.
   
• Be mindful of the patterns and their corresponding bonuses located on the right of your Swago Board. The patterns will vary in difficulty and bonus value. Once you’ve achieved a pattern, the corresponding “Submit” button will light up. You can have multiple patterns available for submission, however, you can only submit ONE pattern so choose wisely.
  
• Each activity you successfully complete on your Swago Board will give you anywhere from 1-20 spins on the Spin & Win Wheel. You have until Monday the 15th to use all your spins.

The Spin Wheel is pretty fun.  Mostly I get entries into sweepstakes that I never win (*insert Debbie Downer 'womp womp' here*) but you are also likely to earn some bonus SB points while spinning the wheel.  I'm all about those free points!  

Fill up your board and then submit your pattern to get even more points - if you can fill in the whole board, you get a 500 SB bonus, which is enough for a $5 gift card from the retailer of your choice.  

Click here right now and click "Join" to get started! If you don't already have a Swagbucks account, you'll be able to quickly sign up; PLUS, if you earn 300 SB before the first of January, you'll get a bonus 300 SB!

Friday Funnies

It's the first Friday Funnies of 2018!  Enjoy!

6 Free Indoor Winter Fun Ideas

*Disclosure: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Winter is upon us.  Here in the midwest we're covered with snow.  Of course there's plenty of outside fun to be had but we need some things to do inside as well.  If you're in the same boat, find some ideas for your family in the list below!

1. Indoor Snowball Fight
You can buy super cute kits like the ones pictured below, or just ball up some white socks.  Section off part of the living room or basement, give each player some sock snowballs and let the fun begin!
    
2. Flight School
Cue up some YouTube videos on how to make paper airplanes. Give the kids some pieces of paper and everyone make paper planes.  Then, practice flying them.  Get out the hoola hoop and have one person hold it.  Can you fly your plane through the hoop?  Set up a chair, can you fly over the chair?  Tie a rope or piece of ribbon up high, can you fly your plane under the line of "storms"? 

3. Draw Me
Does your house have a fan of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books?  If so, check out the tutorials on YouTube for how to draw Greg.  It's lots of fun to get out a sharpie and try to follow along!  Same for littler kids who might like Mo Willems' books "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and his "Elephant and Piggie" series.  Here is Mo himself teaching you how to draw Piggie!
      

4. Make Your Own Play Dough
Recipe and clean up tip here.  This dough is easy to make and fun to play with!  It uses simple ingredients you probably already have in the cabinet.  The one kind of odd ingredient is cream of tartar but Amazon has it for under $5 if you don't already have some!

5. Taste Test Snow Ice Cream
Do you know about this?  It wasn't until a few years ago that I learned snow ice cream is a thing!  Gather some fresh (fresh is the keyword here) snow and have the family help make the ice cream.  Vote on how much you like it and what your favorite toppings are.

6. Aluminum Foil Charades

Use aluminum foil (I got the ready sheets kind from Dollar Tree and it made this activity so much easier!).  One player will be the builder and everyone else will be the guessers.  The builder will draw a card and then silently build that item out of foil while everyone else tries to guess.  For the cards, I just used index cards and wrote on them: heart, toilet, boat, phone, and so on.