Writing games for teenage camper

Hello everyone,

Taking advantage of this great new on-line tool that Mike has set up for us …

Every summer for the past few years, Polly spends 3 weeks at camp.  I make a point of writing her a “bunk note” each day, and we have gotten in the habit of playing various writing “games” with these bunk notes, basically things to make the bunk notes a little more fun for her.   Actually, the games make things fun for me as well, and I have used some of these for web pages for my classes as well.  I’d be curious if any of you have ideas for other word games to spice up bunk notes.

Here are some of the games that we do:

 1.  Coded sentences or stories, where the first letter of each word or of each sentence spells out a secret message.  E.g.,

When rabbits invite toads, every toad opens garages. Really, a nice daughter makes an amazing new dishwasher go really awfully. Never die peeling apples.

Or …

Long after the evaporating river dried up, Doug didn’t eat the tasty elephants.

Or …

A large monster walked down the street, looking for a Dairy Queen restaurant. “Bananas!” he said, as he passed yet another Wendys. “Couldn’t there be at least ONE Dairy Queen in the entire city?” Dejected, he ate another house. “Excuse me,” he said to the occupants as they fled the premises, screaming. “Fast food restaurants are not in short supply around here, but I MUST find a Dairy Queen!” “Go away!” responded the people, still dressed for bed. “Haven’t you noticed that it is 3:00 in the morning?” “I don’t care what time it is!” yelled the monster. “July is almost over, and the 2-for-1 special on flurries is about to expire.” Kids now came out into the street from other houses to watch the spectacle. Little ones, big ones, kids who climb on rocks, fat ones, skinny ones, even kids with chicken pox. Monsters didn’t scare them, even those with 20 eyes, 15 long tentacles, and a high-pitched voice like a mouse breathing helium. Never before had they seen anything like this one before. One of the kids came up to the monster and said, “I have some freeze-pops in my refrigerator. Perhaps that might satisfy your craving. Queen-sized freeze-pops!” Right at that moment, twenty police cars and ten fire trucks came rushing to the scene. Sirens blared loudly into the night as the Monster picked up the girl with one of his tentacles and quickly slithered down the street to her house. “Try to stop me, coppers!!” he yelled as he bit the top off of her house and looked for the refrigerator. “Ursula!” said the girl’s mother, “how many times have I told you not to bring monsters into the house?” “Vegetables, fruit, yogurt, hot dogs, pickles, salad, milk,” muttered the monster. “WHERE ARE THE QUEEN-SIZED FREEZE POPS?!?!” he screeched loudly into the night. “Xavier ate all of them,” said the girl’s mother. “You know how hungry he gets during the finals of American Idol.” Zebras from all over the city then started dancing the Macarena.

2.  Actually, this post is already too long, so I’ll save the other writing games for other posts.

 Tom