One day after dinner, my two nieces and a friend beelined to the living room to turn on the TV. I asked them, “Can you do something else other than watch TV?” They responded, “Like what?” I had to come up with something that would sound better than TV shows. Out of nowhere I said, “Instead of watching TV, you should be playing TV. You should act out the TV shows.” So that started our family game of “Playing TV.” They loved this until they became teens.
Here’s how this game is played: You have the Actors and the Viewers. Choose two to three people to be the Actors. The rest of the people are Viewers. You can have as little as one Viewer. The Actors have to act out the program that the Viewers want to watch.
Use an object to be your remote (a pencil box, a toy, or even an actual remote). The Viewer with the remote will call out what show he/she wants to watch. For example the Viewer can point the remote to the actors and say, “I want to watch the Animal Channel.” The Actors will act like animals. To change the channel, the Viewer will point the remote and say, “I want to change the channel and watch Dora the Explorer.” The Actors will have to immediately change their acting to Dora the Explorer.
Only the person with the remote can “change the channel.” Another Viewer would first have to ask for the remote to change to his/her desired “channel.” Encourage sharing of the remote, as in real life.
After about 10-20 minutes, switch out the Actors with the same number of Viewers. The first set of Actors are now Viewers.
This game gave us hours of entertainment and laughters indoors. It takes a little warming up the first time. And then it can get crazy as the kids and adults get into their silly mode. We had the “animals” come out of the “TV” in an attempt to eat the Viewers. But luckily we “changed the channel” before these animals got too far into their feasting.
The kids’ creativity and humor really came through. I captured some of the acts on video, and still laugh watching them today.
Make up any channel or program that the kids know of. We came up with different ideas over the years. Below are some examples.
“I want to watch…”
Cooking channel
News channel
Weather channel
Frozen (or any popular movie that they have watched)
Wrestling channel
Biking channel
PAW Patrol/Peggy Pig (any TV show they know of)
Basketball channel (any type of sports)
An opera
Silent movies channel
An interview with the Queen of England (or any famous character or historic person they know)
Kung fu movies channel
Ballet channel
TIPS: The ideal number of Actors is two or three. Anymore than three Actors would get pretty chaotic pretty quickly unless you have a lot of space for the kids to run on “stage.”