happy times with angry birds

as promised, here's my half-baked version of a DIY "Angry Birds" game. these are more guideposts than actual steps – ideas to get your own creative juices flowing. and the materials are simple: probably what you already have knocking around your place.


confession: i've never played "Angry Birds." my oldest daughter is hooked on the humor of it and plays "Angry Birdshot" (as she calls it) with her Daddy on his smartphone. i have a dumbphone – and an almost complete lack of knowledge of anything hip and new. (i recently bought my first mp3 player and was shocked to learn that this was something hip and new when i was barely out of high school. hm.)

but, i take my daughters' enthusiasm for this version to be confirmation of my inherent hipsterness (and not a natural propensity for hurtling objects). anyway... i give you our DIY versions in two parts...

birdie battle 1: breaking news

this was the winning version and, as usual, a slap-it-together approach. the girls had fun wadding up balls of newspaper. i secured them with masking tape. a cousin of the girls had an "Angry Birds"-themed birthday and he gave away stickers. so the girls chose stickers to represent which side of the bird-pig battle a ball was on. i then secured those with Scotch tape. and sha-bam.

vs.

birdie battle 2: powerpuff porkers

scrubbies + googly eyes = a ton of ways to chuck a bird at a pig.

use super glue or a glue gun; craft glue is not strong enough. we launched these (as well as the newspaper versions) with a makeshift wooden-spoon catapult and, mostly, just threw them with our hands. you can also grab the strings on the puffs and swing them 'round and 'round and launch like a David-style slingshot. these things grab plenty of air.

for both battles, and the ensuing war of combined fronts, we simply stacked cups and blocks for the piggie fortresses. it was epic. cups toppled. googly eyes were gouged. at least one pig shed a tear. and the girls had giggling fits at their destructive power... i think we'll be playing this again real soon.