Fun With Plagues of the Bible Day '07

received rave reviews from my kids.

We missed the county fair (I'm a little choked up at the missed opportunity for deep fried cheese curds,) so I hosted a private "Fun With Plagues of the Bible" day in our backyard.

We had games, prizes, and ice cream. Noel can now relate seven of the ten plagues. He asserts that the "lake of blood" plague is his favorite.

The merriment consisted of the following games of divine inspiration:

"Lake of blood game": I filled the kids' pool with water, red jello, "dead" fish, and hid coins in the bottom. They had to dig through the "lake" to retrieve the coins, in exchange for prizes. Noel and Sophie did well. Jack sat in the lake.

"Destroy the crops" game: using water balloon "hail," the kids attempted to knock "crops" (carrots from my garden) from a board with holes, in which the carrots sat. It turned out to be harder than expected, in part because Jack kept running away with the water balloons and calling them "babies."

"Pin-the-boil-on-the-plague-victim" game: operated basically like your run-of-the-mill donkey version, but utilized festering boils instead of a tail. Jack rocked at that one. He also stole the boils at the end of the game and stuck them to our deck. I don't know whether that warrants a call to the CDC or a carpenter.

"Frogs and gnats descend" game: used balloon frogs and gnats. I dumped them on the kids from the deck, and they had to dig through the balloons to find a few that I marked, to get a prize.

"Locust hunt": since we have our own little biblical plague of grasshoppers in the yard, this game was begging to be played. I gave the kids nets and told them to catch three grasshoppers. Noel caught a couple and Sophie cried. Jack just poked the grasshoppers and squealed maniacally. That game was a little disappointing.

All in all, it was a good day. The kids loved it, and hopefully they'll remember a few bits of biblical info.

Now I'm on to planning "Getting Crazy With the Qu'ran Day."

Atheists do religion SO much better than the faithful!