If you want to spice up Indigenous People’s Day (known as Columbus Day)  with your nieces and nephews, make a mini-celebration of Columbus’s birthday. You may also find that school-aged kids are interested in “Explorer-themed” parties (i.e., celebrating beyond Columbus and into all of the others, including Vasco de Gama and Ferdinand Megellan).

To get the creative juices flowing, here are some ideas:

For Crafts:

-Make telescopes out of gift wrap tubes.
-Make paper sailor hats.
-Make explorer ships out of cardboard or milk cartons.
-Paper mache world globes.
-Make your own compass.
-Make treasure maps using parchment paper.

For Activities:

-Hand out treasure maps you have made before the party, and have the kids follow it to find clues to lead them to a treasure of chocolate gold coins.

-“Claim your land!” This would be a good activity for doing outdoors. Make signs in different parts of your yard with different names (i.e., “New Patch” or “Ace Territory”). Set up an obstacle course that the mini-explorers will have to complete in order to “claim their land!” It gives them fun running around and finding a new territory.

-Once your nieces and nephews have found their land, they will be broken up into teams. Then, you can have a relay race with the kids dressed up as explorers—with beige vests, binoculars, hats, etc. Have them run to the other end of the yard and explore the area to find a treasure (which you will have hidden at the other side), retrieve it, and return to the team. The next person must do the same until everyone is done.

-Play “Name that Explorer,” a trivia game that the kids can play. Have cue cards ready-made to hand out to the kids. Have them describe the explorer listed on the card, and the group must guess who the explorer is. They can use motion or draw pictures in addition to reading out the cue card itself.

Foodie Ideas:

-Apple Sailboat Snack: Cut a slice of apple, and use a toothpick to attach a triangular-shaped slice of cheese!

-Columbus Day Boats: Place three scoops of ice cream on each plate, and place slices of peaches all around the ice cream scoops. Drizzle caramel sauce over the ice cream and peaches. Using a toothpick, stick a mini-marshmallow, a Maraschino cherry, and another mini-marshmallow on top; and stick a toothpick in each of the scoops of ice cream. There you have the Nina, Santa Maria, and Pinta.

Send the kids home with little binoculars, a compass, and the chocolate gold coins.

Happy Exploring!

Photo: chrisroll
Republished: October 7, 2014