Jono Martin via Compfight

Once you have finished your work at school, you can often go and play with something in the room.

But let’s also think about people with unusual jobs – what did they do for play or relaxation?

I think about my great great grandfather who was a whaling captain in the 1870’s. He was stuck on a boat with thirty other men, maybe his wife and a child was also on board. What sort of things did the sailors do for relaxation out in the middle of the ocean?

Here in Australia we are thinking about the soldiers of the Great War – World War 1. If they weren’t fighting in the trenches or charging across the open ground, what could they do for relaxation? If they had been injured and were recuperating in a hospital tent, what could they be doing?

Activities to choose from (CHOOSE ONE):

1. Research board games – when, where and why were they invented?

2. Create a new game for someone to de-stress from their lifestyle.

3. Your family are stranded on a deserted island, with nothing but your clothes. How will you entertain yourselves?

4. Research ball games around the world – find out the rules and then try playing something similar at school or home. How did it go?

5. Find out the ways soldiers and sea captains used to relax over 100 years ago.

6. The electricity grid went out in your country. What would change in your lifestyle? How would you relax?

7. Survey class members about games they have at home. Are you going to include computer games? Create some interesting graphs about results.

8. Find an image that has a relaxing feel to it. Write a poem remembering to give attribution correctly.

Make sure you are ready for our game in a week or so.  To take part in this game, all classes and students will need the following:

•  a user avatar if possible
• an ‘about me’ PAGE if using Edublogs or a post if using other platforms
• a clustrmap or flag counter widget – if your clustrmap is greyed out, check my post here to fix it if using Edublogs widget
• at least four interesting posts – could be topics of your choice not necessarily from the challenge
• your ‘Recent Comments’ widget on the sidebar with 10 comments as the choice – Edublogs
• your ‘Recent Posts’ widget on the sidebar with 10 posts as the choice – Edublogs
• Your ‘Pages’ widget on the sidebar or pages in the header – Edublogs
• at least 10 student and/or classes linked on your blogroll
• at least three overseas blogs on your blogroll
• posts tagged or categorized to make it easier to find interesting posts on each blog
• the more students or classes you have linked on your blog, the more fun the game will be

The most important of these are the links to other student blogs on your sidebar. Try to have a couple of different headings like

• My Friends
• Class Blogs
• Overseas Blogs

Having lots of  links to student blogs from other countries will help spread the game.

Check out Kendall’s right sidebar – she has a list called Blogroll which are her classmates but she also has a list called Blogging Challenge and these are other blogs she visits regularly

Olivia, who has taken part in the challenges over three years, has some great lists of links on her blog – blogroll, class blogs, family and friends, my followers. She also has links to classmates in blogroll in the header of her blog.

Still have time left this week:

Then keep visiting other student blogs and leave great comments including your blog URL. Find some interesting bloggers then add them to your sidebar links. Write some posts about great blogs you have visited, include a link to that blog in your post.

Read the flipboard magazine to visit bloggers who are writing great posts and are then leaving comments on Miss W’s challenge posts. Students with Edublogs free blogs can’t have posts flipped into the magazine, so they are being mentioned on each week’s posts instead.

Check out these blogs

Clara has only just joined the challenge – check out the background, header image and title (all related to what Clara enjoys). She also has some great posts but unfortunately they can’t be flipped into our magazine.

The young students from Grand Atlas blog in Algeria have been visiting lots of other blogs and they would like you to visit them. They have left some great comments on many other blogs around the world.

Mr Helpern’s class have a category for each student – check out their great posts by clicking on their name.