Celebrate National Sock Day

For some reason National Sock Day is coming up on Dec. 3, so let’s talk about some ways to celebrate at home or in the classroom.

Of course first off you need to declare it a silly sock day, and while mismatched socks are a classic for silly sock days, the point of National Sock Day (such that it can be said to have one) is to celebrate the pairs of socks that have stuck together.

Kids can design their own silly socks with this simple printable sock from My Cute Graphics, or use the sock coloring pages from Craft Corner DIY. It would be lots of fun to decorate the classroom with everyone’s silly socks!

The first sock-related book I think of is Fox in Socks, which is always fun to read aloud. Two Pink Peonies has a more Seuss-style printable sock if you like that better. Simply Love Coloring has coloring pages to go with the book. Your kids can sort rhyming words with this printable from Literacy Learn (I had to read the post to realize the words we’re rhyming with are fox and bricks).

Print up a bunch of colorful socks from My Party Design, hide them around the classroom/house and have kids find them and make pairs. Or do this with your mismatched socks and just go on a sock hunt! The Aristan Life has another printable sock matching game and I love that she added hanging the matched pairs on a clotheline (yeah for fine motor skill development!).

And if you’ve got real socks handy you can make some crafts with socks. Making sock snowmen is an annual tradition at my daughter’s school and you can learn how to make them from Art Beat. Or make this cute inchworm from an old sock with instructions from Woo Jr. Of course you can also make a classic sock puppet with this tutorial from Kids Activity Zone.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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