Restaurant
Activities for Restaurant.
The hard part of eating out with young children is not the meal, it is the twenty minutes before it arrives. These are activities that fit on a table, make no noise, need nothing you would not already have in a bag, and can be abandoned the moment the food comes.
Everything here is small enough for a pocket: a pen and the back of the menu, a few coins, a napkin, a hair tie. Several need nothing at all beyond the two of you and a whispered game.
Nothing rolls off the table on purpose, and nothing needs to be picked up off a restaurant floor. That is the whole design brief.
Activities
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Make Up a Story With Three Things
A character, a place, and something going wrong. That is enough for almost any child to be away.
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Five Games for the Wait Before the Food
No bag, no crayons, nothing to drop on the floor. Five games that need only the two of you and a table.
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I Spy, But With Sounds
The same game you already know, played with the sound a word starts with instead of the letter. Needs nothing at all.
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Mixing Colours Without the Mess
Two blobs of paint sealed in a freezer bag. They squash it, the colour changes, and nothing gets on anything.