Since the post for our family vacation was turning into the longest post ever, I thought I'd make a separate post just for Super Fantastico, the day of fun and competition we planned to finish up our family reunion.
Saturday was Fantastico! We had an archaeology themed day. We divided everyone into four groups, the Indiana Jones group, Lara Croft, Carmen Sandiego, and the kids were on the Dora the Explorer group. I'll talk about the kids day first. The kids started with a scavenger hunt. They found adventurer hats, whips I'd made out of fleece, jewels, gold coins, maps, paper airplanes, artifacts (from the world landmark Toob). Oh, and they found rubber snakes too =) After they'd collected all their items, they were ready for archaeology training. They took their whips and used them to knock over cans that Jack had drawn awesome bad guys on. They loved that! Later they got dart guns I'd made out of pvc pipes and nerf bullets. They shot them at a Target at first, and then later used them to shoot at each other. This was such a big hit! Everyone loved it! I couldn't help giggling when I used it, it really was fun! Next time I'll make felt vests for targets. =) There were a few things planned that we didn't get to, we always plan too much! But after they had practiced lots of explorer skills, they collected all the pieces of a map to some treasure! After they assembled the treasure map puzzle, they read the riddle. The Frozen treasure can be found where monkeys swing and flames abound. This lead them to the fireplace where they found a pinata with Elsa and Anna on it! This was a very sturdy pinata so everyone got a chance to whack it. =)
Meanwhile, the other teams were competing in their own events. In no particular order, the adults competed in:
Pin the Hat on Indiana Eric. I had a picture of Eric swinging a ten foot whip from when we were in college, and I cut out Indiana Jones hats. Jessica was the star of this game. Even after plenty of spinning by Andrew, she took one big step to the right and then walked straight to the poster! When it was my turn, I would have missed the poster entirely except Serenity yelled at the last minute, "LEFT MAMA, LEFT!! So I managed to actually tape my hat to the poster instead of the window. Nowhere near Eric, but still better =) After much persuasion Serenity gave this a try as well. She hates getting things wrong, so trying to stick a hat on when she can't see seemed like a terrible idea to her. I finally convinced her that sticking it in crazy spots was part of the fun, so she took a turn and ended up sticking her hat on the wall in the kitchen. =) So I was too convincing I guess. Still it was fun!
Mummy wrap: The three teams each got a couple of rolls of toilet paper and tried to wrap one of their team members. This was a ton of fun but we hadn't really thought ahead of how to judge a winner... we let Donovan pick. He didn't really like that though! But it was fun to do!
Bridge building: We made bridges out of popsicle sticks! They had to hold up a pile of books... and they all did! We finally had to move on to having people standing on them in order to get the bridges to actually break! That was hilarious all by itself. Trying to set the person evenly onto the bridge was an interesting task. All the bridges withstood Marilyn standing on them. It took Andrew to break one. =)
Paper airplane drop: The goal was to create out of paper a structure that would take the longest to float to the ground when dropped from the second story. Patricia came in second by making a speck of paper that took nearly four seconds to hit the ground. Jack won first for his cool spinning thing.
Name that archaeology movie site: We found an online quiz that had photos of various sites that had also been in movies. Way fun!
Board games: No fantastico is complete without board games. We played Pizarro and 7 Wonders. Instead of the usual way of playing those games, we had teams since two people from each team got to play the game. There was a third game on the list but we ran out of time. Teams had also been earning points all weeks by participating in the Fantastic Game of the Day. Eric also made an extremely challenging obstacle course. First you had to dribble the false idol between the cones (soccer ball) while giant boulders (hula hoops) were rolling at you, and then shoot it into a tunnel ...(playhut) Then throw the idol through a passageway (two croquet sticks). Next jump out of the tunnel and leap over another area (the tunnel) Then jump on stones over the lava while being shot at by ping pong balls. You had to step on the stones or you had to start over. In retrospect we made that part a little too hard. We probably shouldn't have reloaded the ping pong balls so many times. People were extremely tired after that. Once across the lava you had to swap the false idol for the real treasure and reverse the path. Jennie volunteered to go first... because she figured that gave her the best chance before the ping pong ball thrower got good at throwing, and she did win! Eric came in second. At one point Jack was going around the ping pong table in circles because he kept getting pegged with a ping pong ball and he was just laughing helplessly. Definitely should have just let the ping pong ball thrower have one batch of ammo.
Hopping on one foot challenge: I'm not sure how we justified this with our archaeology theme, maybe it was just to practice defeating other treasure hunters =) In this game you basically hop on one foot while holding the other one, and you try to knock over other people or force them out of the circle. Jessica took out Andrew. Eric and Jack and Eddie were left. Eddie and Jack said that they should focus on taking out Eric, but they got distracted, and after Jack was out Eric beat Eddie.
Dart Guns: The adults got a turn with the dart guns too. They got three chances to hit the bull-eye. Xiao was the winner with a perfect first shot!
Perplexus: This is a maze game I got Eric long ago. The challenge was just to get as far as you can in three tries. The furthest someone got was maybe 12... out of 60. So we need some more adventuring practice =)
Geo Puzzle: We had a world map puzzle that each team took turns racing to complete. I think the Indiana Jones team one that one =)