“Yay! Stinky tofu!”
— 6 kids, unaware of what they were about to eat
Premise:
For a trip to Taiwan with 6 children, I wanted to keep them excited and engaged during the trip. This started the itinerary booklet, but I wasn’t sure it was engaging enough.
Ideas:
It started off as a scavenger hunt of things to do, but that led to the problem of someone coming first — competition is great, but on a family trip we didn’t need 5 crying children. It came down to three main principles:
Any prize had to be available to everyone who wanted one
There had to be a fair chance to “win”
The first winners should still be rewarded somehow
Solution:
BINGO! No, literally. I created a bingo sheet, and bought a bunch of stickers for the rewards. Everyone, including adults, could pick a sticker in the order they got bingo, and I got at least 2 of each to prevent exclusivity.
The bingo activities were also grouped into categories I wanted the kids to experience: food, visits, everyday experiences, and anytime fillers. This gave them a spread of activities, with the visit spreading blackouts and excitement through the whole week instead of the first few days. I even created a color-coded bingo maker (below) to ensure the items would be spread out — nobody could purely eat their way to a bingo!
Bingo worked perfectly, with the kids constantly talking about what they still had left to complete. They even got excited about stinky tofu AND using a squat toilet. Too perfectly on the toilets, with one of the boys having a meltdown when he didn’t see a squat toilet after hearing the girls had one. Everyone tried all the foods, though sometimes the kids wouldn’t want to try something unless it was on the bingo card.
