Grown-ups tell you to stop and smell the roses, look closely at nature and enjoy the fresh air instead of playing on your phone. Now you can do both. Here’s a game that’s a good excuse to play on your phone and message with your friends while being outdoors or exploring your house instead of sitting around making your parents annoyed that you never move.
Mainly, you have to have tech capabilities. You need a phone or tablet that takes photos or video and a pretty big texting or data plan. If your family only has like 300 texts a month to share, this isn’t the game for you because the restrictions will hold you back. You have to be able to fire messages and photos back and forth at lighting speed so your network is going to get a workout. So MAKE SURE YOU ASK YOUR PARENTS before you play this game.
This is a variation on I-Spy that lets you zero in on a common object and use your mad photography skills and editing software to create a thumbnail of only part of the thing and challenge your friends to identify it. It could be the flusher handle on your toilet or a street sign or part of the nutrition label on your cereal. The goal is to isolate a cool looking and distinctive piece of something you look at every day, capture it and transmit it to your friends for guessing.
You could do this when you’re bored waiting on your parents somewhere like a home improvement store or your sister’s dance recital…snap a picture of a paint can handle or the plastic tip of your shoelace and send it to a friend with “I.D. It” in the subject line. Set the stopwatch feature in your phone to see how long it takes him to come up with the correct answer. If you get tired of waiting, provide a clue via text.
When he guesses right, he gets to send you an up-close snap of something where he is and you have to guess it or it remains his turn and he gets to send you a different picture to guess. This can go back and forth forever or you can get him stuck on an object and keep bombarding him with different shots of the same thing (the toilet tank lid, the plumbing tubing that goes into the wall) until he guesses it or gives up. Keep score on the memo app your mom made you get so you’d stay organized…see that electronic notepad is good for something after all.
