Earth Hour 2016 and 1980s Trivial Pursuit

We LOVE Earth Hour, and diligently celebrate it every single year. The tradition involves candles, of course--lots of candles!--

--but also the Playing of a Board Game. During this Earth Hour, I introduced for the very first time the game Trivial Pursuit. I have my Junior edition from the 80s, so it's partly perfect, because a lot of the questions are at their level, and partly ridiculous, because it's from the 1980s. Here, for example, is a small selection of the questions from my edition:

• "What cheese spread is a whiz to put on toast?"
• "How many Vikings landed on Mars in 1976?"
• "What country is the Leaning Tower of Pisa in?"
• "Was The Police's debut album titled Zenyatta, Mondatta, Outlandos d'Amour, or Magilla Gorilla?"
• "What horse does Alec Ramsey tame when he's shipwrecked on a desert island in a popular novel?"
• "Could the world champion men's high jumper outjump the champion jumping horse?"
• "What letter adorns the flag of the Legion of Super-Heroes?"
• "What are Chesterfield, camel's-hair, raccoon and Burberry all styles of?"
• "What's a person who doesn't eat meat called?"
• "What's the highest mountain in the world?"

We skipped any questions that we thought the kids wouldn't possibly be able to answer, but I was surprised at how many questions were relevant--my children have a good-enough background in history, geography, literature, and science to hold their own in 1980s children's trivia games!

Trivial Pursuit wasn't a great game to play by candle-light, as the light was a little dim for reading tiny print by, and we spent an awful lot of time asking each other "Did I land on a pink or an orange? Oh, a yellow!":

We played it again the next day, and found it much more comfy!

Although we do Earth Hour every year, this particular Earth Hour was especially appropriate, as we'd only recently completed a 24-hour electronics fast for Will's Cadette World Thinking Day badge. In the past, I'd been treating Earth Hour as purely environmentally-motivated, but World Thinking Day is all about using these experiences to make connections and think globally, so it was a great chance to discuss the lack of electricity in many communities in many parts of the world, and how that might affect people, in both good and bad ways. Lots of time to play games together in the dim light. Awfully hard to read your textbooks or complete your schoolwork. If you're motivated to cover global issues with your kiddos, I highly recommend incorporating an electronics fast into your overall Earth Hour experience. And if you're feeling especially motivated, there's also a World Water Day!