I now know a lot of "holding" strategies for children aged 4-11, but I'd only be capable of it in shifts.

Songs, especially songs with actions work with children across this range.

Cards will be beyond the grasp of the littlies.
Unless you use colour / suit for Snap.
But then one of the few games I know is Beat Your Neighbour Out of Doors, aka Strip0 Jack Naked.
Hardly appropriate in the circumstances.

I would NOT want to play cards with Mr. Heinlein. He based too much of Lazarus Long on himself! :D

I do. I have a set of plastic (not plasticized, actual plastic, Bicycle makes them) cards as well as regular pasteboards.

And I remember a lot of card games, suitable for small children to adults, including numerous versions of solitaire.

I also have a small chess/checkers/backgammon set.

Child management and entertainment is supposed to be part of the standard Red Cross offerings. When I was working at a recovery center during some flooding here, there was a child care area set up with toys, stuffed animals (that the kids were allowed to take with them), and a licensed child-care working watching over everything. This wasn't a shelter, this was a FEMA site where folks were coming to do the paperwork to get their vouchers.

You're stuck in a Refugee center
 

Lay there and revel in your abandon?

FTW

Seen this one about the teenagers who have organised themselves to go and find food for the rest of the people in their shelter?

http://english.aljazeera.net/video/a...520689503.html