What it is: An easily adaptable game seen all over for all age groups. Here, it’s a game played on paper cards. The free printable cards I provide are animal themed.

Best for: Children in small to large groups (great for classrooms).

What you need: A printed game board for each child playing and a way to mark off squares that have been called. You can mark squares with something physical like cereal or candy. This is fun (especially if it’s M&Ms instead of Cheerios), but make sure children are old enough not to bump their boards and get things out of order (or eat their square markers!).

If you don’t want to use something physical that can get bumped or moved, use markers or stickers. The downside of this method is it will destroy your game boards – unless you laminate them first! Then you can use stickers that are easily removable, or dry erase markers, so you can use the same boards and play again and again.

How to play: In Bingo, each child gets his or her own Bingo game board. The boards have a 5 by 5 grids of squares, with each square being a unique item or number. Here, they are unique animals. Typically the center square is a free space, so each board has 24 different animals. There are 54 different animal pictures in this version of the game, so each game board is unique, and each game board has a 50/50ish chance of having any given animal.

The game moderator then starts calling out the 54 animals in the game in random order. Children must listen closely, because when the game moderator calls out an animal a child has on his or her game board, the child gets to mark it off.

The goal of the game is to get five marked-off squares in a row, either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

As soon as a child does this, they call out, “Bingo!” The first player to call out “Bingo!” wins. If more than one player calls out Bingo at the same time, they tie for first place. You can continue playing for second, third, etc., place.

Variations: In addition to winning a Bingo round by marking off five squares in a row, you can make the game more exciting by adding in rounds requiring players to win by marking off other formations on their board, like the ones pictured. (Players will have more than these squares marked; these are just the minimum to win.) Some are shorter than a normal round, and some are longer.

• Four corners – Mark the four corners
• Blackout – Mark every single square
• Outer border – Mark all the squares in the outer border
• Middle square – Mark the eight squares that surround the free space
• Letters – Mark off squares to form a letter, like T, L, X, or M
• Specific Bingo – Require players to get a specific five-in-a-row to win (like the first column, or the second row)
• Double Bingo – Players need two five-in-a-row’s to win
• Plus sign – Mark the middle row and the middle column
• The last to Bingo – When players get a Bingo, they are eliminated. The player who goes the longest without getting a Bingo wins.

Another way to make your Bingo game more exciting is to offer prizes to the winners, or have players swap their cards with each other randomly during a round.

Printables: Now that you know how to play, here’s everything you need to print and…well, play!

This PDF has the actual game boards (54 unique cards, which means you can play with up to 54 people at once).

This PDF is for the moderator or person running the game. It has strips of words with the all the animals in the game that you can print out, cut up, and read out loud. It also has 60 different sets of the animals in the game in random order, so, instead of drawing names and reading them, you can just read down the list (and play 60 unique games).

There’s also a PDF with each animal on a separate page, in case you want to show your class or players a visual of what each animal looks like, either digitally on a screen/projector or printed out. (You can also download this with 4 animals to a page.)

And, as a bonus, I have all of these translated into Spanish! (If I got anything wrong in the translation, please let me know and I’ll fix it.)

This would be an excellent activity for language learners, either English language learners of any age from any language, or English speakers learning Spanish. Introduce the vocabulary with the visual cards and use the Bingo game as a review.

Even more variations: “I spy” Bingo is another fun way to play. I have a Fourth of July and a Halloween version.

Any fun Bingo experiences or variations to share? I’d love to hear! And happy playing!

What it is: An alternative way to set up a white elephant gift exchange, where you basically set it all up yourself. Sounds less fun than the normal way? It doesn’t have to be!

Best for: About 10 to 20 people

What you need: A very generous host!

So rather than looking at this as a white elephant gift exchange, think of it as a fun way to give a gift to a group of people (co-workers, family members, etc.). If it’s Christmas or some other gift-giving occasion and you want to give a gift to everyone in a group in a fun, unique way, this might be it!

This game works the same way as a white elephant gift exchange, with all the same rules. The only difference is, you will supply all of the gifts yourself.

The gifts can be whatever you want. They can be inexpensive or they can be nice. It’s often fun if they’re all the same type of gift with different patterns or themes, but they don’t have to be.

We played this most recently at a family Christmas gathering. My husband and I decided to set it up as a fun game for everyone. We bought a bunch of pairs of wacky/unique socks, enough so everyone would have one. Then we wrapped them all with different wrapping paper, put them in the middle of the room in the evening after Christmas dinner, and played! Everyone ended up with a pair of silly socks. We tried to include a variety, so some were laughable, some were cool, some were neat, and a few were pretty undesirable but in a funny way.

It was a good game because everyone (kids and adults) could participate together. And because we didn’t have too many kids, and there wasn’t too much overlap in the socks the adults wanted and the socks the kids wanted, there were minimal tears. (Minimal. Unfortunately not no tears.)

Like a good white elephant exchange, it’s fun if some of the items are kind of eccentric (there were many options for that when it came to silly socks). We’ve also done it with wall calendars. Wall calendars are another great gift idea, because you have a huge range of styles to choose from, from serious (motivational quotes) to beautiful (beaches and mountains) to specific interests (movies and video games) to just silly (cats doing yoga).

You can also set up the game with items that are unrelated to each other. My mom has done this for our family’s Christmas gifts for the past few years, and we all have a blast. Each gift is unique (exercise equipment, kitchen supplies, just funny stuff), but they’re all nice, and people still steal and scheme, but everyone walks away with a gift in the end.

It’s a neat activity that turns a group gift into a game (so not only do your family/friends/co-workers get a gift, they also get laughter and memories, which are probably even better). Other theme ideas for gifts might be candy, treats or food, gift cards, nostalgic toys, or even more “boring” things like office supplies. Have a variety of pens and pencils of varying quality, and shake it up by throwing in a few truly absurd writing utensils that are sure to make everyone laugh. What other ideas can you come up with?

Variations: You can read about the normal white elephant gift exchange here. There’s also some other activities, Christmas gift pass and mystery gift pass, that involve less stealing and conniving and might be better suited for young children. You could easily adapt the mystery gift pass to play with adults as well, and it might also be a fun way to give a group of people a group gift. Have fun!

What it is: A car game, perfect for killing time on long (or short) rides.

Best for: A carful of players, from 2 up to 8 or however many fit in your car or van (or bus!)

What you need: A car trip!

How to play: This game is a variation on the alphabet game you play in the car, the one where you look out the window and try to find words that start with each letter of the alphabet, in order. Well, on a recent car trip when our family hit some traffic through a sparsely populated area and were crawling along and needed a way to entertain ourselves, we decided that, instead of looking for signs with words on them, we would just look for objects that start with each letter of the alphabet instead.

So instead of looking for a sign with a word that starts with a letter A, you just look for any object that starts with the letter A, like an arrow, or asphalt. Then move on to B, then C, and see if you can get to Z before the trip is over.

I think the game is best played cooperatively as a group. It’s fun because it’s a little more creative than the other variation. For example, you see a hamburger wrapper lying by the side of the road. It could be paper (P), maybe a wrapper (W), or even litter (L). Use your vocabulary and think creatively and see how far you can get!

It also moves faster than the other version. My daughter and I keep trying to get through the whole alphabet during the trip to pick up the older kids from school, and we’ve almost done it! One of our trickiest letters is I (it was easiest at Christmas time when there were lots of yards decorated with inflatables). (I’m sure letters like U or Q would be even trickier, but we usually don’t make it that far )

Rules: The rules we’ve played by are that the items must be outside the car, and they must be nouns that you can see (so “air” doesn’t count). We also don’t count adjectives (so “blue mailbox” wouldn’t fly for the letter B). But pictures of items do count (so a billboard with a penguin on it counts for P). But feel free to add or adapt your own rules!

Variations: Besides the normal alphabet game, another car I-spy game is the license plate search. Or, if physical objects are too hard, you can always play with brainstorming items in your head, too!

So we’ve finally reached the end of the school year, and the end of our unexpected little adventure in homeschooling. My kids love their end-of-year parties so much and they were both super bummed to miss them. So I wanted to give them the best little at-home end-of-year-party I could. I wanted to try a game, something fun and new, so enter…the human piñata.

What it is: An activity involving candy and running. Don’t worry! No one gets whacked with a stick. Instead, kids chase around the “human piñata,” someone with tons of candy attached to their shirt.

Best for: Kids! And one grown-up who’s a good sport

What you need: A cheap or old t-shirt, individually wrapped candy, a hot glue gun, and a piece of cardboard; also, small buckets or bags for children to collect candy in

How to play: Before you play, prepare your shirt by gluing the pieces of candy all over it. There are some tips and techniques to this:

• Use a tiny dot of hot glue for each candy.
• Use a low-heat glue gun, or give the glue just a second to cool down before you stick the candies on.
• Try not to press the candies on too firmly; you want kids to be able to pull them off fairly easily.
• Slide a piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt before you glue so the glue doesn’t stick to the opposite side.
• Use individually wrapped candies. Sealed candies like mini bags of Skittles work better than loose-wrapped candies like Smarties, Starbursts, Dum-dums, or Hershey’s kisses; the loose wrappers can easy tear or fall off.
• If you’re using small individually wrapped chocolates, especially if you’re playing outside, consider throwing the whole shirt (candies and all) into the fridge for an hour or so before you play, just to try to minimize the melting/smushing of the chocolates.

When your human piñata is set, dressed in their candy shirt and ready to run, say “Ready, set, go!” and the kids go crazy! Depending on the age and number of children you’re playing with, you might want to set up some rules (like no tackling the piñata). Make sure you have enough candy for all the children. For large groups, you might even have more than one human piñata. You also might want to give the children buckets or bags to collect the candy in.

This was a lot of fun for us! I think it’s just something so different than what kids usually do, it should create some memories.

Happy summer!

What it is: A simple and kind of silly talking game

Best for: A small group, and kids older than about 5

What you need: Just your brains!

How to play: 

Leg of spider,
Tail of rat,
Turn your dog
Into a hat!

In this game, players take turns making up silly spells. The spells follow this format:

[Ingredient 1],
[Ingredient 2],
Turn your _____
Into [something silly that rhymes with ingredient 2]

The ingredients often, but not always, take the form:

[Body part] of [animal or plant]

So, some examples of spells…

Thorn of rose,
Foot of frog,
Turn your grandmother
Into a dog!

Tail of unicorn,
Eye of newt,
Turn your homework
Into a boot.

Grease of bacon,
Horn of goat,
Turn your bed
Into a boat!

There are two ways you can take turns. One player can make up a whole spell and then play passes to the next player. Or, what I personally think is more fun, four players make up a spell together. Player 1 says the first line, player 2 says the second line, and so on. Player 4 should be someone old enough to rhyme.

It can be a great game for kids to teach rhyming skills and encourage creativity.

So how about it? What spells can you guys come up with? Post in a comment below!

Disclaimer if magic runs in your family: The Game Gal is not responsible for any friends, family members, and/or pets being turned into items including but not limited to monsters, animals, and/or household objects.

What it is: An activity where you throw marshmallows at each other!

Best for: A larger group, any age

What you need: 

• Marshmallows! The big kind works best.

How to play: Really I can’t make it much simpler: throw marshmallows at each other!

Marshmallows are fun because they’re harmless, and yummy. Also relatively easy to clean up. You can play indoors or outdoors.

The first time I remember playing, we were on a family reunion and I saw my mom emptying some bags of big marshmallows into a tray. I went up to ask her what she was doing and she threw a marshmallow in my face! Once I got over the initial shock, I laughed as everyone joined in, throwing marshmallows all over the room. It was pandemonium. And a lot of fun.

Just watch out for players who try to stick the marshmallows in their mouths or bite them in half before throwing them, because then the marshmallows get sticky.

You can also play with mini marshmallows and DIY marshmallow guns made of PVC pipes. Here’s a tutorial I found online. That works well for a big group outside and is a ton of fun. Again, watch out for those people who stick the marshmallows in their mouths before shooting them, resulting in sticky marshmallow wads stuck to everyone’s clothes and hair. (Ew!) That might be against the rules for you, your call.

So grab a bag of marshmallows and organize a marshmallow fight!

What it is: It’s not the card game – it’s a quiet game of perception and memorization

Best for: Any size group, with players old enough to write

What you need:

• Paper and a writing utensil for everyone
• A tray or flat area to display items
• Items to display and memorize. It works great if there’s a theme to follow, like items from a diaper bag if it’s a baby shower, or jewelry and accessories for a princess themed party.

How to play: First, assemble your items. The number of items you have will vary depending on the age of your players and how hard you want the game to be. Let’s pretend you’re playing the game at an art themed birthday party. You might gather items such as these:

• An orange crayon
• A blue marker
• Watercolor paints
• Big paint brush
• Small paint brush
• Sheet of paper
• Pencil
• A red colored pencil
• Eraser
• A purple bottle of paint
• Pencil sharpener
• One paper towel
• A piece of green construction paper
• A yellow pipe cleaner
• Two googly eyes

Seat all your players in a room. Give each a piece of paper and something to write with. Then bring out your items. It’s handy if you have them on a tray or a table. Set a timer and give your players a set amount of time to study the objects. Depending on the age of your players and the number of your objects, this might be one minute, three minutes, or even 30 seconds.

When the timer ends, remove all the items from your players’ view. If they’re on a table or on the floor, you could throw a towel or sheet over them.

Set another timer and give your players a chance to write down as many of the items they can remember. Again, you could give them one minute, five minutes, or whatever you think is appropriate.

After everyone has had a chance to write down as many items they can remember, show the items one by one. Anyone who wrote down the displayed item gets a point. You can offer two points to players who remember something about the item, too; for example, if they wrote “orange crayon” instead of just “crayon.”

After players tally up their own points, ask things like, “Who remembered at least 10 things? Who remembered at least 12? Who remembered more than 15?” until you narrow down enough players and eventually find the player or players who remembered the most. They get a prize!

It’s a great shower or party game. Have fun!

What it is: A variation of freeze tag

Best for: A large group (at least 8 players)

What you need:

• A big, open playing area

How to play: Choose one or several people to be It – the ones who run around and try to tag the rest of the players. Let’s say June and Bobby are It. They stand still, close their eyes, and count to 10, giving the rest of the players a chance to run and scatter. When Bobby and June are done counting, they open their eyes and spring into action.

Bobby and June run around the playing area, trying to tag (touch with one hand) as many people as possible.

Say Bobby tags Raoul. As soon as he does, Raoul has to freeze, standing still in one spot, and put his hands above his head and lean slightly to the side, like this:

See how he’s making roughly the shape of a banana?

Then Raoul stands still and waits for someone to unfreeze him.

In banana tag, Raoul is unfrozen by two teammates, not just one, who come up to either side of him, each grab an arm, and pull his arms down – like Raoul is a banana they’re peeling, get it? Then Raoul is unfrozen and he can run around again, until he’s tagged again.

The game ends when Bobby and June have frozen all other players. I like banana tag more than regular freeze tag because having to have two players unfreeze a frozen player (or, in this case, peel a banana-ed player) makes the game a little harder for the players (and a little easier for It).

Have fun!

Variations: Freeze tag, and the even sillier variant, freeze tag with all your limbs bent or all your limbs straight. Another type of tag is photo tag.

What it is: A game where players step on balloons tied to each other’s ankles!

Best for: 5 to 12 players

What you need:

• String
• One balloon per player per round
• A big open space to play (indoors is ideal)

How to play: To set up, tie a balloon to each player’s ankle with a short piece of string. There should be at least a few inches of string from the ankle to the balloon so the balloon can bounce along the ground.

Have all your players carefully stand at the edges of the play area. At “go,” all players rush forward and try to stomp each other’s balloons so they pop. When your balloon pops, you’re eliminated from the game. Go sit or stand along the sidelines and watch until there’s only one player remaining with a balloon on their ankle: the winner!

Some rules: No touching the balloons, and you might want to set up clear guidelines up front about pushing or shoving.

Variations: This game is similar to floppy sock tag, but for sure a lot noisier!

What it is: A quiet, low-activity big-group game of speed

Best for: Older kids and up, and at least 10 players

What you need:

• A dice
• Two balloons

How to play: Divide your players into two even teams. Have one team sit cross-legged on the floor in a line, side by side, creating one long line. Have your second team sit the same way, with their backs to the first team’s backs. So you should have two parallel lines, one line for each team, with their backs to each other.

Next everyone holds hands with the two teammates on either side of them. Go to one end of the lines where each team will have an end person. Say, for example, Team 1 has Nicolas and Team 2 has Inez. Give Nicolas and Inez each a balloon to hold in their free hand. They should hold the balloon in their hand but keep their hand and balloon down on the ground beside them, not in their lap.

Go to the other end of the lines, which will be the starting point. Eric on Team 1 and Louise on Team 2 are there. You as referee sit next to Eric and Louise with a dice in your hand. Start rolling the dice, making sure to hold it where only Eric and Louise (by turning their heads) can see it.

As soon as you roll a 1, Eric and Louise each squeeze their teammates’ hand. Those teammate number 2s will pass the squeeze on to the player next to them, and so on and so on down the line, until, like an electric current, Nicolas and Inez will feel their hands squeezed.

As soon as Nicolas or Inez feels a squeeze, he or she holds up their balloon high as quickly as possible. The first team to raise their balloon wins. (You as referee make the call.)

Have everyone rotate (so Eric and Louise would move to the end of the line, holding the balloons, and those teammate number 2s move up to be the first in line, the players watching the dice). Then go again.

That’s your gameplay! Play until each player has had a chance to be both the balloon-holder and the dice-watcher, then tally up each team’s points and declare a winner!

One rule is no talking is allowed. Players should not be clued in that an electric current has started before it reaches them. (So Eric and Louise should refrain from gasping in excitement if the referee rolls a 1.)

Variations: Instead of rolling a dice, you could also flip a coin. When it lands on heads, the first players start passing the squeeze down.

And instead of having players hold up balloons, you could put only one hand-sized object, like a water bottle or a tennis ball, at the end of the line, equidistant from Nicolas and Inez. Whichever of them grabs and holds up the tennis ball first wins.

What it is: A simple game of chance where you try not to get a face full of water

Best for: A small to big group

What you need:

• Small cup
• Water to put in the cup
• Slips of paper
• Drinking straw (optional)

How to play: Fill your cup with just a tiny amount of water. You could even dip a drinking straw in another cup of water, put your finger over the top, and release the water in the straw in an empty cup.

Choose one person to be It. How about José? Everyone else sits in a circle around the room and José stands in the middle and holds the cup of water.

José chooses a category. You can use the categories list in the word generator (or the categories post has some lists, too) for ideas if you want.

Let’s say the category José chooses is mythological creatures. José announces the category to everyone, then secretly thinks of an item in the category, like a dragon. He writes down “dragon” on a slip of paper, folds it up, and puts it down where no one can read it.

José then starts with one player, like Evie. Standing in front of her with the water cup ready, he has her name an item in the category. Evie says “hippogriff” so José moves on to the next player, Sophia. She says “Big Foot.” José moves to the next player, John, who says “dragon.” So John gets a face full of water. José just tosses it in his face. Then José shows everyone the paper with “dragon” on it, to prove that he did indeed come up with that word beforehand and not just pretend he had picked dragon because he doesn’t like John.

So, in summary, the player who names It’s pre-selected item gets the cup of water in their face. Then that person gets a turn to be It and think of a new category.

You can add a rule that, if any player takes more than 3 seconds to name an item, they get the face full of water. Also, the person who’s It keeps going around and around the circle until someone guesses the item.

Enjoy the suspense that comes from hoping a cup of water doesn’t get thrown in your face!

Best for: A small group of players (3 to 6), big kids to adults

What you need: 

• All-purpose baking flour
  
• A cup
• A penny
• A pie tin, cookie sheet, or baking dish
• A butter knife

How to play: To set up the game, pack the cup tightly with flour. Then carefully turn the cup over in the pie tin and gently pull it back, leaving a cup-shaped stack of flour in the middle of the pie tin. Then very carefully place the penny on top of the stack, right in the middle, like this:

To play, players take turns slicing a chunk of flour away with the butter knife while everyone watches. If a player tries to slice away a chunk that’s too thin, the rest of the players can vote to make the player go again.

Eventually the penny will fall. The last player who touched the flour stack before the penny falls loses and, as punishment, has to dig the penny out of the flour using only their teeth. They’ll inevitably end up with a white powdery face, so you might want some paper towels (and a camera) handy. If you want to play again, set up a new stack with new flour and go for it!

I’ve played this game as part of a trivia game, too. Players had to answer questions, and if someone answered a question incorrectly they had to cut away a slice of flour. If you answered the question correctly, you didn’t have to cut away the flour and so didn’t have to risk getting flour all over your face/in your mouth. 

If you don’t like the idea of putting a piece of money in your mouth, you can play with a piece of candy like a Sweet Tart or a jelly bean. The money is just more difficult, resulting in more laughs (except for the poor person with their face in the flour).

Speaking of the poor person with their face in the flour, someone inevitably will try shoving their head from behind as they bend over the flour pile, pushing their face into the flour, making an even bigger mess, and possibly losing the penny even more. If you want your players to play nice, make sure you set up your rules (like no touching the flour-digging player) at the beginning.

What it is: A small-group (even two-player) playground game my son and I invented at the park the other day. (Since my son invented the game, I let my five-year-old daughter contribute to this post by drawing the post artwork. So the cat doesn’t have anything to do with the game, but it’s cute, right?)

Best for: A grown-up and some kids at a playground

What you need:

• A camera or smartphone

How to play: The other day at the park, the weather was nice and all I wanted was to take some cute pictures of my kids. My one-year-old, I could understand how it would be difficult. It’s hard to get her to sit still. I didn’t have much luck. My five-year-old, she obliged me a little bit. But my seven-year-old, he’s old enough to know to sit still, right? Old enough to cooperate and let his mom get a good picture of him? Nope, not at all. I couldn’t get a single good shot of his face.

But, on the plus side, it led to us creating a new form of tag that my son loved and was a lot of fun.

We call it photo tag!

It’s kind of like hide-and-seek, and it’s best played somewhere players can hide, like on a playground. One person (the grown-up with the camera) is It. We’ll call her Mom. All the players run and scatter throughout the playing area while Mom counts to ten, then opens her eyes and, armed with her finger poised over the camera button, starts searching for the players.

Mom’s goal is simple: capture a photo of a player that clearly shows the player’s whole face. The players are allowed to run, hide, and evade Mom, but are not allowed to cover their faces with their hands.

At the end of your playing time, Mom can show all the players the pictures she took. The player with the least photos of their face wins. Or, Mom can show players pictures as she takes them.

This probably isn’t a game where you’ll want to take turns being It. Better just let Mom handle the camera, unless you’re playing with teens or above.

Variations: If you are playing with teens or above, let everyone hold a phone/camera, and everyone can be It at the same time. Then at the end of an allotted time, everyone shows any picture they got of someone else’s whole face. The player with no photos or the least photos of his or her face wins! For more creative versions of tag, try banana tag or freeze tag with all your limbs bent or straight.

Samples: Interestingly enough, this game actually led to some of the cutest pictures of the day, candid ones I shot as my son was trying to evade me. Since he was having so much fun, his smiles are genuine. Mom wins!

What it is: An active game involving hopping and rock-paper-scissors

Best for: A big group (at the very least 8 players) in a gym

What you need:

• 20 to 30 hula hoops
• Optional: Painter’s tape to secure the hula hoops to the floor
  

How to play: This game is easily demonstrated through a video, so let’s just start with one right off the bat:

Now that you get the idea, lets talk specifics! First, setup. Place or tape your hula hoops on the ground, creating one long trail of hula hoops that can wind and curve across the gym. There should be room on each end of the trail for a line of players to stand.

Divide your players evenly into two teams and send each team to line up at either end of the hula hoop trail. Then you’re ready to start the game!

Let’s say on Team 1 we have Simon at the front of the line, and on Team 2 we have Mary. At “go,” Simon and Mary start hopping down the hula hoop trail, landing once in each hula hoop. When they meet each other, they play a quick round of rock-paper-scissors. (If they tie, they play again quickly until someone wins.)

Say Mary wins. The loser of rock-paper-scissors (Simon) then leaves the hula hoop trail, going back to the end of his team’s line. Mary gets to continue hopping up the hula hoop trail, trying to get to the opposing team’s starting point.

As soon as Simon leaves the trail, the next player in Team 1’s line (we’ll call him Jacob) starts hopping down the trail. When Mary and Jacob meet, they play rock-paper-scissors. Say Mary wins. Then Mary continues hopping down the trail, Jacob goes to the end of his team’s line, and Jacob’s team sends another player hopping right away.

The game ends when someone reaches the end of the hula hoop trail (the starting point for the other team).

It’s a great game because it works for any age. If your players are too young to play rock-paper-scissors, have a buddy walk with them and play rock-paper-scissors for them. And there’s really not much skill involved. Sure, some kids might be faster hoppers than others, but anyone (even the youngest players) can win at rock-paper-scissors. So it’s a great mixed-age group game.

Also, it’s so fun! For some reason players just get so excited when a teammate wins at rock-paper-scissors. Much cheering occurs. So much suspense! So much intensity! So much hopping! This game is a keeper.

Source: I learned about the game from Eric Branch. His video of his gym class playing is great! It went viral. Thanks for the great game, Eric!

What it is: A great Halloween activity where players wrap each other up like mummies

Best for: 6 players or more, divided up into teams of 3 or 4

What you  need: 

• 1 to 3 rolls of toilet paper for each team
• A roll of masking tape for each team (optional)

How to play: Once you have your players divided up into teams, give each team their roll(s) of toilet paper. Then have each team choose one player to be the mummy. The other players on the team will wrap the mummy with toilet paper, making them look as much like a real mummy as they can! There are several ways you can do this:

• Set a generous timer, like 10 minutes, and have teams make the best mummy they can. At the end of 10 minutes, have a judge give out awards like Best Overall Mummy, Most Covered, Most Realistic, etc. You can award candy as prizes, too. This variation might be best with masking tape, to make those higher quality mummies, none of that sloppy stuff.
• Another variation is more about the sloppy stuff. Have players race against each other. The first team to completely use up their toilet paper wins. You can still have a judge award prizes based on the best mummy.
• Combine the mummy wrapping with a relay race. Have a designated area or room the mummies can race across. After players use all their toilet paper to wrap up the mummy, the mummies races across the room and back. The first team to complete the relay without their mummy wrappings falling apart wins!
  
• Don’t keep a timer and don’t make a race. Just let players have fun with it! If you have a lot of toilet paper, have players take turns being the mummy.

Happy playing, and happy Halloween!

What it is: A challenge where players race each other to see who can be the fastest to eat a dangling donut

Best for: 5 to 8 players

What you need: 

• One donut per person
• String to suspend the donuts with
• A long stick like a mop or broom handle

How to play: First, you’ll need to do some set up. Count out a donut for each person who’ll be playing. Then cut an approximately two-foot length of string for each donut.

Tie a string through the whole of each donut, careful not to pull too tight so as to not rip the donut. Tie the other end of the string around the pole and space the strings at least a foot apart from each other.

To start the game, have two people hold the pole so the donuts hang at mouth-height of the players. It’s better to be slightly too low than too high.

Have all players come and stand in front of a donut. It might be good to have strings of varying lengths so players can select, based on their height, which donut hangs best next to their mouth.

Once each player has a donut, have all players put their hands behind their back and say go!

Then all the players race to see who can eat their donut the fastest. The trick is no hands are allowed, so players can use only their mouths to eat. With the donuts hanging freely, this is trickier than it sounds! Good laughter is sure to ensue from all spectators.

The first player to finish their whole donut without dropping any on the floor and chew it up and swallow the whole thing wins! (If it drops on the floor, you’re eliminated.) Then the winner gets to eat all the rest of the donuts! (kidding)

If you live in Texas, make sure you use Shipley’s donuts. They’re totally the best.

Have fun!

What it is: A pool game, kind of like a version of tag

Best for: 4 to 8 players

What you need: 

• A swimming pool

How to play: First, choose one player to be It. We’ll call him Chase. When all your players are in the pool, Chase closes his eyes and counts to ten or twenty. Meanwhile, the rest of the players swim around the pool to different locations. When Chase reaches the end of his counting, he does not open his eyes but keeps them closed. Chase then starts looking (or really, feeling) for other players. The first player Chase touches is the new It.

You might think it’s kind of unfair for Chase, wandering around the pool with his eyes closed while everyone else gets to swim with their eyes open. Here’s Chase’s advantage. At any time he can call out “Marco!” Then everyone else in the pool must answer with “Polo!” That way Chase can get an idea of where everyone is. Even if Ty is standing right next to Chase when Chase calls out “Marco!”, Ty still has to answer with “Polo!”

According to some rules, players aren’t allowed to swim underwater, since they might not hear and get a chance to say “Polo!” Players are also not allowed out of the pool.

Side note, I don’t know why the game is named after the 13th-century explorer. Does this video shed any light on it?

What it is: A reverse of the game catchphrase. Instead of one person talking while everyone else guesses, it’s the opposite; everyone talks while one person guesses. (Head on over to catchphrase if you don’t know how to play.)

Best for: 5 to 10 players

What you need: 

• A list of catchphrase words or, even better, an app or website like my word generator would be really handy.
• A chalkboard, dry erase board, or TV screen to display words on

How to play: First, your setup. You need some surface to display words on where everyone in the room can see it, except for one person who will sit with their back to the word. We’ll call that person Dave.

If you have a board to write on, have Dave sit with his back to it and have a list of words ready to write on the board.

We’ve played before with my word generator app and an Apple TV. We just Airplay the app up to the TV so it’s easy to tap and display new words. (If you have an Android you can also cast to, for example, a Google Chromecast.) Dave would sit or stand to the side of the TV, with his back to it.

As part of your set up, you can also divide your players into two teams.

Dave’s team goes first and, as said, sends Dave up to sit with his back to the TV (or board). Write or display your first word on the board or screen, say “go,” and start a 30-second or 1-minute timer. Dave’s team reads the first word, which is “monster.” Then they all try as fast as they can, with talking only and no acting, to get Dave to guess the word.

• “A big hairy thing that chases kids and hides in closets!”
• “Sulley and Mike from that Pixar movie!”
• “Kids are scared this is hiding under their bed!”
• “Oscar and Elmo and Grover from Sesame Street are all…”

It will probably be pretty crazy, as you can imagine, with everyone shouting. Just like in regular catchphrase, players aren’t allowed to say any form of the word “monsters” or any word that contains “monsters” (like Monsters, Inc.).

As soon as Dave says “monster,” write or show a new word on the board or screen. Everyone keeps going until the timer runs out. Then tally up the points Dave’s team got (the number of words they guessed correctly) and let the other team have a turn.

It’ll be crazy and include a lot of shouting, but that’s all part of the fun!

For a list of word ideas to use, check out my online word generator or download the app (available for iOS or Android), or visit the catchphrase post or the printables page for some PDFs you can download.

Variations: Catchphrase, of course, is a variation. The game celebrities also has some catchphrase elements to it.

What it is: A lung-powered cross between air hockey and ping-pong, played around a table

Best for: 4 to 8 players, divided into two teams, and any age

What you need:

• A table big enough for all your players to gather around
• A ping-pong ball
• A drinking straw for each player (optional)

How to play: First, set up your playing area. Divide the table in half, one half for each team. If your table has a seam down the middle, that’s nice and convenient. You could also use a strip of masking tape. Then have your players surround the table. You want players’ heads to be at table level, so the best way to do this is have players kneel around the table. Young children might stand. If you’re using a coffee table, maybe players could sit.

If you don’t have enough players to completely surround the table, stack books or lay another type of barrier across the open sides.

Once you have your teams assigned and your players in place, put the ping-pong ball in the middle of the table and say “go.”

The object of the game is to blow the ping-pong ball off the opposing team’s side of the table. So everyone bends down, takes a deep breath, and blows! The ping-pong ball will shoot around the table, being blown around until it sneaks past a player onto the floor. That player’s team loses the round, the other team gets a point, and a new round can start.

You can let players blow into straws (thick smoothie straws work especially well) if you want to let them more precisely direct the direction of their blowing. No straws works just fine, too. Try both ways and see which one you like more.

One rule: Players are not allowed to touch the table at all. So no hands on the table, and no pressing your body against the edge of the table to keep the ping pong ball from falling. (If you find the game too difficult this way, you can modify the rules to fit your players.)

It’s a game so fun, it will take your breath away! (Sorry. I couldn’t resist.) Seriously, though, it can involve a lot of exhaling. Make sure no one passes out! (Though I often end up laughing so hard I can’t blow the ping pong ball anyway!)

Best for: All ages, and pretty much any group size

What you need: 

• A roll of masking tape

How to play: Start by tearing a small strip of masking tape for each person. Loop the strips to make a piece of tape sticky on all sides, then have each person stick the piece of tape right on the end of his or her nose.

Game play is very simple. Two players walk up to each other, press the tape on their noses together, and pull back.

The tape pieces will stick together and one person will end up losing their tape, with both pieces sticking to the other player’s nose. The person who lost their tape is out of the game. Meanwhile, the person with two pieces of tape goes up to challenge another player. If they keep their tape, they go on and challenge someone else. Any player who loses their tape is eliminated. Eventually the winners will collect bigger and bigger wads of comical-looking tape on the ends of their noses, until the last two players face each other and one person is left with a giant wad of tape on the end of his or her nose, the winner!

Rules: Except for at the beginning when players are first sticking the tape on their noses, they are not allowed to touch the tape with their hands at all. At the beginning, they are free to press their tape on their nose as much as they want. When two players approach each other to touch tape, they aren’t allowed to touch each other (to prevent cheating).

It’s a short, simple, kind of silly game that will probably get lots of giggles. It would be a very interesting icebreaker, but it’s also fun for a family reunion (it works great with mixed ages) or a group of people who know each other well.

What it is: A toss-and-catch game played outside with water balloons

Best for: At least 4 players

What you need: 

• Players will form pairs, and each pair needs a beach towel
• A good supply of water balloons, because hopefully a lot of them will pop and get your players wet (because where’s the fun if that doesn’t happen?)
  
• Optional: A volleyball net or homemade volleyball net (e.g., a line strung across the yard)

How to play: So first let’s cover a basic water balloon toss. Two players toss a water balloon back and forth with just their hands, trying not to miss or they’ll get splattered with water.

With this version, players don’t use their hands but a beach towel instead. Players form pairs of two, and each pair holds a beach towel. Players hold the short ends and spread out the beach towel between them like this:

If you put a water balloon in one pair’s beach towel, they can lower their beach towel and, by lifting their hands quickly, pop the water balloon into the air. If they aim towards a second pair of players, that pair can catch the water balloon by cradling it in their own beach towel.

So that’s one way to play, if you only have four players. Two pairs of players toss a water balloon back and forth to each other, catching it in their beach towels, trying not to let it pop.

You can also play with more people and set up your game more like a traditional volleyball game, even over a real volleyball net. Put an even number of pairs on each side of the net to form two teams. Then play just like normal volleyball. Instead of trying to pass the water balloon to someone, the players who pop the water balloon into the air will try to land it on the other team’s side and make it pop.

If a water balloon lands on the ground or pops on a team’s side, the other team gets a point. If a pair of players tosses a water balloon out of your pre-set game bounds, the other team gets a point. It is legal to toss the water balloon to another beach towel on your own side, as long as you don’t let it drop. You can play to a max point value or until you’re out of water balloons. Switch up the teams or pairs every now and then if you want!

It’s a less skilled version of volleyball with hopefully more laughs, and a good chance to practice teamwork, with players working in both pairs and teams. Also, hopefully you’ll get wet. Best played on hot, sunny days. Have fun!

What it is: Games to play with your kids at home to get them to clean! Here’s a few we’ve used at our own house.

Best for: A family of young kids at home cleaning a house

What you need:

• A messy house

How to play: Ah, cleaning with young kids. Sometimes when the house is messy and it’s time to clean, it can be so tempting to get my kids out of my hair somehow so I can just get the cleaning done on my own. It goes so much quicker that way! Of course, that’s not always possible. And of course, we all want to teach our kids the value of hard work and personal responsibility. But come on, I’m the Game Gal here! Do you think we get through our chores without any play at all? Of course not! Here are some of the common “games” we use to get through chore time at our house.

Drawing for jobs

My mom used this technique all the time when I was a kid. She would write whatever jobs needed to be done on slips of paper, fold them up, throw them in the air, and then us kids would scramble for them. Kind of felt like a piñata being opened…but the opposite. Anyway, there was a fun feeling of suspense, unfolding your slip, wondering what job you got.

It was also a handy tool for the days she had some extra kids over, like friends or cousins. She would write more than one slip for a larger job (usually a room in the house like the kitchen or the living room) and anyone who drew that room would form a team or partnership. I think it was also a handy way for her to absolve herself from responsibility: How could we be mad at her if we drew a job we didn’t like? We were the one who drew it, after all.

What’s my job?

Another one invented by my mom. Basically the kids just say “What’s my job?” Then you give them a job and they do it. When they’re done they come back and say “What’s my job?” again. It’s not the most effective cleaning game in our house, but it can work.

Secret item

I got this tip from a friend. If you’re staring at a messy room, secretly choose one item, especially an obscure or tiny item off to the side. Tell all of your cleaners “go,” and then they start cleaning the room. Watch carefully, and as soon as someone cleans up the secret item, tell them and they get to sit out for the rest of the cleaning time. Repeat in a new room.

I like this because it encourages not only working but also speed – the faster you pick up toys, the more toys you pick up, the more likely you are to get the mystery item and get to sit out. Also, since the item is a secret, you can cheat a little so the secret item “magically” always ends up one of the last things left on the floor…

One job, one fun thing

This works well for big open Saturdays where we have a whole house to clean, but also time for some fun, too. At the beginning of the day my kids and I will make a list of all of the big cleaning tasks that need to be done, like clean out the car, weed the yard, clean the kitchen, etc. Then we’ll make a list of some fun things we want to do that day, like play with play doh, have a dance party, eat popsicles, etc.

I write all the things on slips of paper and fold them up and put the fun things in one jar and the jobs in another jar. Then we just alternate: someone draws a job and we all do it together. Then someone draws a fun thing and we all do that together. We go through like that until both jars are empty. It helps to have fun rewards, and it helps my kids stay motivated when they get a reward after each task, instead of cleaning the whole house all at once.

Obey spray

This is the most recent game we’ve invented. My son read a book at school – Dog Man, I think? I guess there’s a villain in the book who has this stuff called obey spray that will make obedient servants out of anyone he sprays? Not totally sure…but it’s the premise of our game, which is probably the most fun for my kids.

They get to “obey spray” me so I’m their obedient servant and then I help them clean! The trick is, I can only obey if they themselves are also doing whatever they ask me to do. So if my son tells me to put away the stuffed animals, I only do so if he’s also putting them away. If he stops, I stop. And then if a certain amount of time goes by without me getting any commands, the obey spray wears off and they’re left cleaning their room on their own.

I’ve liked this game better than “What’s my job?” because it puts the initiative in their hands and makes them own their mess more, makes them assess what needs to be done instead of me. And they also think it’s pretty fun, giving mom commands. Oh, and I guess in the book laughter reverses the effect of the obey spray? So when the room is clean, we end with jokes or a tickle fight and then I’m free.

Now a note from me as a mom instead of me as the Game Gal: Most of the time in our house, jobs are just boring jobs. The kids do them on their own, sometimes without complaining but lots of times with, sometimes without my husband and I nagging but lots of times with. When we all clean together, we don’t always play fun cleaning games. Still though, even if the cleaning games are the exception rather than the norm, I think the fun times will stand out in my kids’ memories. That’s how it was for me.

What it is: An easy, moderately active gym game

Best for: A large group of children

What you need:

• Something harmless to throw. In this game, you’ll be throwing things across the gym. It can be anything harmless like crumpled up pieces of paper, foam balls, wadded up socks, lightweight inflated balls, etc. The more the merrier!
• A place to play. A gym is ideal. You could potentially play outside. The important thing is you have a clearly marked playing area with a distinct line down the middle, dividing your playing area in half.

How to play: To start, divide up your players into two teams. The teams stand on either side of a line down the middle of the playing area.

Next, take your “garbage” – your harmless things to throw across the gym. Let’s say you’re playing with wadded up paper balls. You can either divide the garbage into two equal piles and put one pile on each side of the line, or you can dump all of the garbage in the middle of the two teams, right down the dividing line.

Then signal the start of the game, by blowing a whistle or playing music or something.

When the game starts, players have only one objective: get the garbage off their side and into the opposing team’s. So players run, pick up, gather, and throw the garbage as quickly as they can. It will most likely be pandemonium.

At the blow of the whistle or when the music stops, all the players must stop throwing. Both sides count up the garbage that remains on their side of the gym. The team with the least amount of garbage wins! Then have your losing team be in charge of cleaning up all the garbage so you can play again!

The game is easily understood by all ages and can be a fun game for a mixed age group. And the more heft your garbage has, the more active your game will be. If you play with paper, for example, paper doesn’t travel far and both teams will hover close to the dividing line, tossing paper across. If you play with balls that travel farther when you throw them, it will naturally lead to more running around the gym.

Best for: A class at school.

What you need:

• The game works best when players have desks or tables to sit at. Other than that, you don’t need anything!

How to play: (Okay, this is reaching way back into my grade school memories for this one…) Heads up, seven up is a game often played in classrooms as a reward or to fill extra down time. It’s quiet and calm (great for teachers!) but fun for the kids.

To start, choose seven children. We’ll call them the Seven. They move to the front of the room and stand, facing the class. The rest of the class sit in their desks. Then the teacher (or whoever’s in charge) calls out, “Heads down, thumbs up!”

All the students sitting in their desks put their heads down and put one thumb in the air, like this:

They close their eyes and cover their faces so they can’t see. I seem to always remember the lights being off at this point, too, but maybe that’s unnecessary. Just tell kids not to peek.

Once all the students in their desks have their heads down and their thumbs up, the teacher signals to the Seven, who then quietly walk among the class. Each of the Seven picks one student sitting down and quietly touches their outstretched thumb. The student then tucks their thumb into their fist but continues waiting silently with eyes closed.

Once the Seven have all touched a thumb, they stand back at the front of the classroom. The teacher announces, “Heads up, seven up!” and all of the students in the class can raise their heads and open their eyes. The seven students whose thumbs were touched stand up.

Then the standing students each get one chance to guess which of the Seven touched their thumb. So, for example, let’s say Michael and Alyssa are two of the standing students whose thumbs were touched. Shelby and Drew are two of the Seven standing at the front of the classroom. On Michael’s turn, he gets to guess who touched his thumb. He might say, “Shelby?” But let’s say he’s wrong and it was another of the Seven who touched his thumb. Shelby says “no” and Michael sits down.

Then it’s Alyssa’s turn to guess. She says, “Drew?” And Drew is the one who touched Alyssa’s thumb. He would say “yes” and then he and Alyssa would switch spots. Drew goes back to his seat and becomes one of the sitting students and Alyssa gets to join the lucky Seven.

Once all of the standing students have had a chance to guess, everyone but the Seven sits down and the teacher calls “Heads down, thumbs up!” again. Play continues as long as you want!

To make it fair, the teacher can choose the order the standing students take when it’s their turn to guess. It’s best if the teacher varies it, sometimes going front of the class to back, sometimes right to left, sometimes left to right, etc., because the students who guess last are at an advantage.

Variations: You can easily play the heads up, seven up game with less than Seven if you have a smaller group.

What it is: A hilarious game! It’s quick-paced, low-strategy, and involves big groups, shouting, and finding your two teammates as quickly as you can.

Best for: A big group, I would say at least 12. You also need players in multiples of three.

What you need:

• You will need specific word lists to play this game. But I’ve got you covered! At the end of the post are some free downloadable lists you can play with.
• Other than that, you need a big area to hold all of your players and, depending on how you play, seats around the outside to sit in. There don’t necessarily have to be enough seats to hold everyone, and they can be couches, chairs, benches, anything.

How to play: To play three deep, first, make sure you have the correct number of players. You need players in groups of three, so 12, 15, 18, etc.

The word lists have words in sets of three, like pig, horse, cow (farm animals), or Spanish, French, Italian (languages), or square, circle, triangle (shapes).

Everyone will end up getting one word, and their goal is to find their two matching counterparts as quickly as possible. The last group of three to find each other is eliminated.

To start, cut your word list into paper strips and fold them. (There are instructions down below about the best way to cut up the word list.) Put the paper strips in a bowl and let everyone pick one.

Let everyone read their word quietly to themselves. Then call “go” and the pandemonium begins.

Everyone starts shouting their word as loudly as possible. Players can use hand motions, too. Inevitably all the players end up in a big clump as everyone mingles, trying to find their two matching buddies as quickly as they can.

As soon as a group of three has found each other, they move to the edge of the room and take a seat, but all in one chair on each other’s laps (this is where the “three deep” name comes from). You’ll notice on the paper slips there are letters next to the words: B, M, and T. These stand for bottom, middle, and top. The person with the B slip sits on the chair. The person with the M slip sits on that person’s lap. And the person with the T slip sits on that person’s lap, creating a stack, three deep.

Now, you might not want to play with players sitting on each other’s laps. That’s okay; you can do a variation. Instead of players sitting on each other’s laps, you could have them all sit at the edge of the room on the floor, cross-legged, back to back (to back). Or you could have them go and stand three in a row with their backs against the wall. The important thing is to give them a place to go and a position to stand or sit in that is easily recognizable as done. If you just told them to form groups of three standing up, for example, it doesn’t work so well because you can’t easily tell which group is last.

Anyway, if you choose to play with a no-sitting-on-laps variation, you can use this version of the word lists that have 1, 2, and 3 next to the words, instead of B, M, and T.

Once everyone has found their groups of three, eliminate the group that was last and go again! Prepare new word slips in a new bowl, yell “go” and start again. See if you can keep playing until only one group remains.

Preparing the game: Preparing the word slips the right way will make your job as host a lot easier. I made a video showing the easiest way to prepare these:

Alternatively, instead of handing out new words after each round, you can reuse them. Have everyone who wasn’t eliminated hand their paper slips back and forth to each other. Have them do this while mingling around, passing slips several times, trying to switch things up enough. The words won’t be new, but hopefully there’s enough randomizing to make a new unique round.

Printables: Here are the printable word lists you can use to play the game. There are two versions: one with the slips labeled B, M, T if you’re playing with sitting on laps, and one labeled 1, 2, 3 if you want to play with a variation with no lap-sitting. There are word lists divided by difficulty level (easy, medium, and hard) and some other categories as well.

I also have a version of the game for Christmas, and one in Spanish!

Source: I found out about the game from this post from the blog 71 Toes. She even has a video that illustrates the game very well.

What it is: A funny and kind of wacky tag game to play inside.

Best for: A group as small as 4 or as large as 12ish, either kids or adults.

What you need:

• Each player needs a pair of long socks, like the knee-length kind.

How to play: To start, everyone puts on their socks, but not all the way. Players put the socks over their toes but aren’t allowed to pull the socks up over their heels. It looks something like the image shown.

That way there’s quite a bit of extra floppy sock hanging off the front of your foot.

Everyone stands in a circle and someone says “go.” The object is simple: Step on the floppy part of other players’ socks to pull them off. When both of your socks are off, you’re eliminated from the game. The last player to keep one or both of their socks wins.

This is a great game for mixed groups of kids and adults. It’s silly and fun for everyone, and easy for children to understand, but there’s enough sport in it that it’s fun for adults, too. It’s also nice if you need a quick, easy game, so it’s great for family night.

We played this game several times over out past Thanksgiving break with extended family, mostly adults. It was so fun! It’s pretty hilarious to see everyone hopping around, trying to protect their socks while stepping on other players’ socks. Also there were some pretty intense family members at our gathering, so when the last few players remained, it kind of turned into Extreme Floppy Sock Tag, which was sort of half wrestling match. Quite entertaining!

Variations: You can do basically the same thing with balloons instead of socks.

What it is: A playground game that’s hard to play unless you have the right place and people, but if you do, it can be a lot of fun

Best for: Three to six children and one to two adults or older teens

What you need:

• You play this game at a park on a playground structure. It needs to be the right type, though. Not too big, provides enough places to hide, but offers enough open space, too. And not dangerous to move around in.
• You also need balls–the more the better! Not balls as hard as dodge balls or soccer balls, but those softer, air-filled plastic balls, or foam balls.

How to play: If I remember right, my family made this one up. Basically all the children are on the play structure, and it’s their castle. The adults are out on the ground around the castle. And then they just peg balls at the kids. Lightly, of course, not aiming for heads. (This is why you don’t want to play with dodge balls.) The kids try to avoid getting hit by the balls, and also try to throw them back out of the castle as fast as they can. There’s probably a lot of laughter and screaming involved. There’s no winning, losing, or being eliminated. Just play for the fun of it.

Like I said, I think my family made this one up. We lived close to a park with a play structure in the shape of a giant castle, which made the game perfect there. I remember my dad running all around, picking up balls, throwing them at us, and all of us laughing. It’s probably one of those games that, when you’re a kid, seems all too short because the grown-ups get tired. We didn’t ever play it as a formal game. We probably didn’t play it more than a few times. But I remember loving it. So I wanted to document it here.

What it is: A silly drawing game that was actually sent in from a reader! Thanks, Jennifer!

Best for: Three to eight players (and a great game for children)

What you need:

• Paper and pens or pencils. You could get fancy with crayons, markers, or colored pencils. You could also get fancy with a pre-made printable form, like the one I provide below

How to play: The game is pretty simple. A paper is divided into thirds and different players draw a monster head, body, and feet, creating a silly monster masterpiece (or monsterpiece) that everyone can laugh at, because the results always end up being funny.

The secret is folding the paper so the current artist can’t see what the previous artists drew. So, Lucy might draw a monster head, then fold over a third of the paper, hiding the head. She would pass the paper to Bryce, who would draw a monster body, then fold the paper over, hiding the body, and pass it to Susan, who would draw the feet. Then unfold the paper for the big reveal!

On the included printable, there are two monster drawing blanks to a page. The drawing space is divided into thirds; once you draw a monster head, fold the paper down until the top edge meets the first line, covering the head. Repeat with the other two sections. The small vertical marks on the horizontal lines tell you how wide to make the monster neck and waist, so the three sections fit together well.

I hope you and your family have some fun monster-drawing silliness with this game, just in time for Halloween!

Draw a Monster Printable

Best for: Two people or a small group, probably ages 8 and up

What you need: Nothing but your brains!

How to play: The basic gameplay is simple: one player thinks of an object and the other players try to guess what it is. For this game, it’s best if there’s a pre-determined category, like food, people, animals, etc. The category that has worked the best for us is people.

But let’s play with food and say Julie thinks of banana bread.

She’s playing with Laura, who, unlike in twenty questions, makes guesses by naming a specific food. For example:

Laura: Is it an orange?

To give Laura a clue, Julie gives a statement starting “No, because…” Like this:

Julie: No, because it doesn’t grow on trees.

Laura guesses another specific food, and then another.

Laura: Is it lemonade?

Julie: No, because you don’t drink it.

Laura: Is it pizza?

Julie: No, because it’s sweeter.

Laura: Is it a strawberry?

Julie: No, because it’s manmade.

Laura: Is it a cookie?

At this point, when Laura’s guess is pretty close to Julie’s item, Laura can give a clue in the form of “No, but…”

Julie: No, but it is a baked good.

Laura keeps guessing until she gets it.

Laura: Is it…oh, I don’t know, banana bread?

Julie: Yes! Wow, good guess!

It can actually be a challenging game. It can be hard to come up with specific guesses when you know so little about the object in question. It can also be difficult to come up with clues that aren’t too easy and aren’t too hard. And it actually hasn’t worked too well with my young children. Carson, my six year old, often looses interest in guessing because it’s too hard or, when it’s his turn to give the clues, gives ones like these:

Me: Is it an eraser?

Carson: No, because it doesn’t erase things.

Me: Is it a stapler?

Carson: No, because it doesn’t staple things.

See my problem? So I would say this game is better suited for older children to adults who want a more challenging version of twenty questions with more thought involved.

Variations: This game, in addition to being like twenty questions, is also pretty similar to the game breakfast combo. (It actually started out as me trying to come up with a version of breakfast combo that my young children could play, because my husband and I play it together but it’s too difficult for them.) If you want another twenty questions variation that’s great for young kids, try poodle, which just might also get you laughing!

What it is: An imagining game where players talk out loud, describing a dream cabin or house.

Best for: A small group of players. It’s ideal for playing on long car rides.

What you need: Nothing. It’s just a talking game.

How to play: My husband introduced me to this game. He said he and his family played in on car rides often. (He’s the oldest of six boys, and they took a lot of road trips.) The game starts with everyone agreeing to build an imaginary cabin. Then each player takes a turn and adds a feature to the cabin. My husband said these usually included things like these:

• Rooms full of bunk beds
• Soda machines around the house
• A movie theater in the basement with an all-you-can-eat popcorn machine
• Observatories
• Underground pools
• Slides or firemen poles leading to lower levels
• A big beautiful bay window right outside the dining area (This was the type of addition my mother-in-law would make, as opposed to the brothers, if you can’t guess.)

Kind of along the same lines as the dream homes my sisters and I would draw as kids. The features can include things inside the cabin, the structure of the cabin, and the surrounding landscape.

My husband did say that sometimes the game tended to break down, as arguments might erupt about placement or functionality of features (e.g., “You can’t put a giant trampoline that catapults into the lake! I already added the boat dock there!”). My husband said this often led to an alternate version of the game where, instead of everyone building onto one collective cabin, each person has their own. Players then still take turns adding on features, but this time to their own personal cabin. Maybe everyone can still be neighbors, at least.

Variations: Instead of a cabin, you can build anything in your mind: Dream home, hotel, mansion, space station, house boat, luxury train, submersible ship, AirBnB house, underwater home, castle, amusement park, a lunar base, tree house, campsite, beach house, airplane, cruise ship…your imagination’s the limit!

My sisters and I also did a similar activity growing up where we would draw our dream houses. I think it’s kind of neat that when my husband was ten years old growing up in Colorado, describing the indoor slides his dream cabin would have, I was ten years old in Texas, decorating my dream house with indoor slides, too.

What it is: A throwing and catching game for a small group. Players try to keep the ball away from one player (the “monkey”).

Best for: A small group, maybe 3 to 5.

What you need:

• A ball to throw and catch. It could be a kickball or an inflated ball. You could even play with a soccer ball that you kick and receive, or a frisbee or some other object.

How to play: Monkey in the middle is one of those simple games that’s easily variable. Players toss or kick a ball back and forth between them, but one extra player (the “monkey”) is left standing in the middle. The other players try to keep the ball away from the monkey. The monkey tries to grab the ball, earning him or her a place on the outside of the circle.

When the monkey grabs the ball, the last player to have touched it is now the monkey. You can decide on more specific rules, too. Does the monkey have to grab the ball, or will simply touching it count? You can adjust the rules and playing size to the ages of your players.

This is often one of those games that happens naturally to pass the time or (unfortunately) to bully someone else by keeping something they want away from them.

Don’t play like that. We all know it’s not nice.

But when played with people who agree by common consent to play, it can be a fun game that lasts for a while.

Presidents’ Day is coming up! I wanted to post a Presidents’ Day game this year so I did some research into the holiday, and it was a lot more complicated than I thought! Wikipedia has the full story if you’re interested, but basically it’s not really standardized who exactly we celebrate on Presidents’ Day. The holiday is officially George Washington’s birthday (even though the holiday never falls on his actual birthday…). Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is also in February so he is often celebrated on Presidents’ Day, too, but it is sometimes used as a day to celebrate all American presidents in general. The name varies from state to state. I had no idea! Did you? How does your state celebrate Presidents’ Day?

Well, before I did all that research, I made a version of Who am I? for Presidents’ Day (you can head over to that post for instructions). The Presidents’ Day version has cards with names of American presidents on them and, I admit, would be pretty dang challenging for most people. I’d probably be awful at it. But if you’re a U.S. History class or if you and your friends are history buffs, you’d probably be great at it!

Presidents’ Day “Who Am I?” game

But after doing my research on Wikipedia, I felt bad for not keeping with the roots of the holiday and celebrating George Washington (and Abraham Lincoln) in particular. So I made another game, a matching game.

At a recent birthday dinner for two of my friends, a third friend put this game together. She made a list of  little-known facts about each birthday girl and read them all out loud in no particular order. We all had to write down which friend we thought the fact was about. It was a lot of fun when we played that way, all sitting around the table at our restaurant and laughing as we got to know the birthday girls in new ways.

This Presidents’ Day version may not produce as many giggles, but it’ll definitely keep you thinking! I don’t think it will be easy. (It definitely wouldn’t be for me!) To play, print out the printable. Read the facts out loud to your group. An answer sheet is included for players to write their answers on. There’s also a key so you can read the correct answers at the end of the game. The player with the most right answers wins! I think this would be a great game to play in school as you’re learning about the presidents of the United States, especially Washington and Lincoln. There are 32 facts, 16 about each president. If some of them are too hard or if there are too many for your age group, just leave some off and have students make their own answer sheet.

Presidents’ Day game: Name that president

To complete your Presidents’ Day celebrations, don’t forget to check out my Presidents’ Day pictionary list.

Happy Presidents’ Day and happy playing!

What it is: A talking and guessing game for a large group of people. You’re assigned a character or person and you have to ask questions to other players until you figure out who you are.

Best for: A medium to large group of people, maybe 10 to 20.

What you need:

• You’ll need names of characters or people written on cards. These can be themed, like all Star Wars names or all Disney princesses. The broader the theme, the more difficult it will be. You can make your own cards (3×5 cards work great) or I provide some free printable cards at the bottom of the post.

How to play: Before you start, tape a different card on each player’s forehead with masking tape. Do it carefully so they can’t see the name. Once all of the players have a card taped to their forehead, announce the start of the game.

Players are free to mingle throughout the room, talking to each other and trying to figure out which character they have taped on their forehead. They’re allowed to ask yes or no questions, but that’s all. Once they guess correctly, they can remove the card and go stand to the side until everyone guesses their card. (Or they can continue to mingle, answering others’ questions to help them guess.)

Encourage players to move around and mingle and talk to more than one person. It can be a good way to get a variety of clues, and it makes the game more of an icebreaker. Also, sometimes some players may not be familiar with all of the names on the cards, so you might have to talk to multiple people to get enough clues to guess who you are.

If you want an example, let’s say you’re playing in a group where everyone has a Disney character taped to their forehead. Here are some of the questions you might ask and the answers you might receive:

Am I a hero? Yes…

Am I American? Not applicable.

Not applicable? Well, you speak Standard American English, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re American (especially in animated movies, right?).

Am I a person? Yes.

Am I from the past or the future? Present…maybe sort of past?

Am I a boy? Yes.

Am I CGI or animated? CGI.

Am I Woody? No.

Buzz Lightyear? No.

Am I the main character? Yes.

Do I have super powers? Um…no, I would say no.

Am I a grown man? Yes.

Do I play sports? No.

Do I save a girl? Yes.

Do I have a co-star? Yes, several.

Do I have a sidekick? Not really.

Do I sing any songs? No.

Thank heavens.

I’m good, right? At heart…

Am I not good on the surface? You could say that.

Do I have a love interest? No.

Um…give me a hint. Maybe you’re bad guy…but that does not mean you are bad guy…

Have you guessed it by now? (Side note: it’s one of my favorite Disney movies.) Leave a comment if you have!

Printables: I made a couple printables to get you started if you want to play this game. There’s a list of female and male Disney characters. (I broke it out by gender in case you have an all-girls sleepover party or something, or if you want to match gender to players.) I only used animated Disney movies, I included Pixar, and, though I didn’t include every movie or every character, there are definitely some obscure ones in there. Each card has the name of the character as well as the movie to make identifying the character easier. If there are some that you think are too difficult or that your group won’t be familiar with, just leave them out.

There are six cards to each 8.5×11 page. Just print and cut along the dotted lines. I would recommend printing on cardstock. Or, you could cut out the cards and mount them on 3×5 notecards.

Female Disney Character Cards

Male Disney Character Cards

If you play, let me know how it goes! Or let me know if you have any requests of character lists you would like to use. Happy playing!

What it is: A really simple game kids can play in a car. It’s not so much a game as an…activity to pass the time? Or a way to tease/persecute the person sitting in the middle of the backseat.

Best for: Three or four children, however many are sitting in the backseat of a car.

What you need:

• A car with a backseat and a road to drive on. The road also needs curves – sharp turns on residential streets are best. Highway driving, not so much.

How to play: In this game, players basically use the momentum of the car to squish each other.

It’s simple. When the car makes a left turn, everyone in the backseat leans as hard as they can to the right. When the car makes a right turn, everyone leans as hard as they can to the left. In theory I guess the passengers are just responding to the natural forces of momentum, but it’s more about exaggerating and slamming into each other as hard as you can.

This game is the least fun for the person in the middle. The people on the edges get smashed against the windows, true. But half the time they get to be the ones doing the smashing. That poor middle-seater? They just get smashed and smushed each and every turn the car makes. Same applies to the smallest person playing. I was younger and smaller than my cousins who taught me how to play. Guess who was smushed the most? Luckily, I’m the oldest of my siblings, so when it came time to teach my younger sisters how to play, I experienced sweet recompense.

The thing is, even when you’re getting squished, it’s kind of a fun game. And luckily the game never lasts longer than a car ride, so if you’re in the middle, the next time you get in, you can hustle for a window seat.

Good luck, and I hope you don’t get squished too bad.

What it is: A variation of twenty questions. It’s a little more complicated than twenty questions and involves more thought for both the guesser and the one answering the questions. So if you like twenty questions but it’s getting a little old, this’ll probably be the perfect game for you to try.

Best for: Two players.

What you need: Nothing! Those games are the best.

How to play: Just like twenty questions, this game starts with one player (we’ll call him Josh) thinking of an item to guess. Unlike twenty questions, it’s best if this item is pretty specific. So some good examples might be things like this:

• Your iPhone
• A garbage sack
• The shirt I’m wearing
• A Garmin GPS

Some not-so-good examples:

• Clouds
• Rocks
• A house

Does that make sense?

So, let’s say Josh is playing and he’s thinking of an item, and he comes up with his iPhone. Then the person he’s playing with, Paige, gets to start guessing, with the goal, of course, of guessing that the item is Josh’s iPhone.

In twenty questions, Paige would ask yes or no questions and try to deduce what the item would be from the provided clues. In breakfast combo, Paige just goes ahead and starts guessing things. They can start out random. It’s also good if these guesses are more specific rather than broad. So…

Paige: Is it a fireplace?

Because this is the first guess, this is what Josh says:

Josh: It’s more like a fireplace than anything you’ve guessed so far.

Then Paige gets to guess something else.

Paige: Is it a turtle?

Now Josh needs to decide if the item, his iPhone, is more similar to a turtle or a fireplace. Say he decides it’s more like a fireplace.

Josh: It’s more like a fireplace than a turtle, but, like a turtle…

And then Josh would fill in a clue, something that his iPhone and a turtle have in common. It could be anything he comes up with, like:

Josh: It’s more like a fireplace than a turtle, but, like a turtle, I’ve seen it.

So then Paige gets to guess something else.

Paige: Is it a campfire?

Josh answers the same way he did before.

Josh: It’s more like a fireplace than a campfire, but, like a campfire, it needs to be started.

Paige guesses again:

Paige: Is it a Sega Genesis game system?

In this case, Josh would probably decide that his iPhone is more like a Sega Genesis than anything else that Paige has guessed. So he says:

Josh: It’s more like a Sega Genesis than anything you’ve guessed so far.

(Here you can add a slight variation. Josh can either say the above sentence and leave it at that, or he could provide a reason, e.g., “It’s more like a Sega Genesis than anything you’ve guessed so far because it’s manmade.” The second option makes it easier for the guesser.)

Play goes on like that, with Paige guessing specific objects and Josh responding. If the item Paige just guessed is closest to the item Josh has in mind, Josh says, “It’s more like [current guess] than anything you’ve said so far.” If the item Paige just guessed isn’t as close to the item as something else she’s previously said, Josh says, “It’s more like [previous guess] than [current guess], but, like [current guess], [something current guess and item have in common].

As you might guess, it’s often just as challenging for Josh to come up with answers as it is for Paige to guess. It’s fun because it does provide some new variety to the classic game of twenty questions. It’s a great game to play in the car (which is where Paige and Josh play it most).

Variations: As stated, breakfast combo is a variation of twenty questions. It’s also very similar to no, because. For another, more creative/silly variation of 20 questions, try poodle!

What it is: A Thanksgiving tradition my mother-in-law always does. It’s a talking reflection activity, a great way to develop grateful hearts because it goes beyond the typical “Name one thing you’re grateful for this year.”

Best for: A group of people, any size, at a Thanksgiving dinner.

What you need:

• Slips of paper with different items you can be grateful for written down on them. I provide a free printable below. When my mother-in-law does it, they’re always cute crafty papers punched out the shape of leaves or shaped to look like little pilgrim boats or something. Mine are a kind of cheap imitation, but if you print them on cardstock and cut them out I think they might look okay. Feel free to use some of my word ideas and make your own cards as cute or as plain as you would like them to be.

How to play: The tradition is pretty simple. At Thanksgiving dinner, each guest will be given one card with different items you can be grateful for written on them. These can include things like family, home, food, sunshine and some that are more specific (like a random act of kindness). After everyone has eaten, go around the table and have each guest tell a story or explain the time they were most grateful for the item on their card.

My mother-in-law usually preassigns the cards by setting them at place settings. You could also have guests randomly draw a card. But I like having them at the place setting at the beginning of the meal because it gives everyone a chance to think (this is one of those things that you need to think about). One thing to be aware of, some of the topics could be sensitive or difficult for some guests, so allowing trading is always a fine idea.

The stories can be longer or shorter; they might just be a few words. But I’ve found that it’s really a great activity that leaves everyone feeling grateful for the blessings we do have, because a lot of times the time when we were most grateful for something is the time we didn’t have it. There’s something about hearing others’ stories or grateful experiences that is very powerful. I love Thanksgiving at my in-law’s because we do this each time.

If you want an example, say I were given the card food. I might tell about the time when I had finished labor and delivery with my first child, and I was amazed and happy and exhausted and I hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. And then my new son and I made it to our recovery room and he was all swaddled and clean and my husband was there, and I got to order lunch! And the hospital food tasted so good, and I don’t think I had ever been more grateful just to have food to eat. The experiences can be as simple as that.

Printables: Here is the printable I made! I’d recommend printing on cardstock. Feel free to pick and choose. The items should be pretty universal, except for the last three pages. Those pages are specific to the Latter-day Saint or Mormon culture (the church I belong to). Feel free to use or not use those pages as you see fit.

What it is: The wonderful game every child thinks he or she invented.

Best for: A small group, or a group to fit however big your playing area is.

What you need:

• You’ll need a place to play. For me and my siblings and cousins, this was always an indoor game, played in a large living room or bedroom (much to our parents’ chagrin). You could easily play outside as well. A playground would be ideal.

How to play: There’s one rule. THE FLOOR IS LAVA! Don’t touch it!

Ah, this is such a fun game. Kids just love to climb and jump, and pretending the floor is hot lava gives you an excellent excuse to do so. So jump from couch to couch, throw down couch pillows to use as stepping stones, step on the coffee table, just don’t touch the floor!

If you play outside, you can make the grass lava, or the concrete, or whatever you want. You can have some spots of ground be safe spots.

Too bad this game, when played indoors, always makes grown-ups so mad. It’s so fun! I remember playing with my siblings and cousins at my grandparents’ house all the time. We played in the upstairs kids’ room, a room with four sets of bunk beds and couches and a chair: a truly perfect setup for hot lava. But if we were too loud as we leapt from furniture to furniture, our parents would hear the banging downstairs and tell us to stop. Once I remember playing in college (you’re never too old for the classics) in our dorm common room, where we took off couch cushions and made paths across the floor, until a resident assistant told us to stop. So much fun!

Variations: Lava monsters are a great variation to have. Either start with one or two at the beginning of the game, or make any player who accidentally touches the lava become a lava monster. The goal of a lava monster is simple: drag other players into the lava, mua ha ha! (This can be literally dragging, or a simple one-hand tag will do.) When players are captured by the lava monster, they become lava monsters, too!

I know you played this as a child, so do you have any variations to share? Or favorite experiences playing? I’d love to hear; leave a comment!

What it is: A group game where one player, the murderer, squeezes people’s hands to “kill” them, trying to kill as many as he can before his identity is discovered. So, whereas the other murder game is all about your eyes, in this one you use your hands.

Best for: A group of about 10, though a little more or less is fine.

What you need: 

• A way to pick a murderer: either a deck of cards or slips of blank paper (or something else you come up with).

How to play: This is another fun variation on the murder game theme (in time for Halloween!). To start, you need to choose a murderer. If you have a deck of cards, pull out one card for each player. Make them all non-face cards, except for one. Shuffle and have each player pick a card, face down. Whichever player draws the face card will be the Murderer. You can do the same thing with slips of paper. Just draw an X on one and fold them all up.

So now one player should be the Murderer, but only he or she knows. To everyone else it’s a secret. Now have all your players sit in a circle on the ground, cross-legged. Then players all hold hands to form a circle, but it’s important that players hide their hands, to the best of their ability, behind backs or under legs. You don’t want your hands just sitting on laps where everyone can see them.

Then announce the start of the game, at which point the Murderer can start in with the dirty work, mua-ha-ha.

The Murderer “kills” people by squeezing the hands of the players next to him. So let’s say Aaron is the Murderer. To his left is Kate, and to his right is Juliet. Aaron, after waiting several seconds, might start by squeezing Kate’s hand three times. Then Kate would “pass” the squeeze to the player on her other side by squeezing his hand two times. That player would pass it on by squeezing only one time. And the player who receives one squeeze…is dead.

Which brings us to: optional dramatic deaths. The game gets extra fun if, whenever you “die,” you die a dramatic death: fall on the floor, gasp, shout out your famous last words, etc. Adds in an element of humor and drama. At the minimum, just announce you’re dead and leave the circle.

That’s basically the only game play. The Murderer squeezes hands of the people next to him, both to his right and to his left, and the squeezes get passed around the circle, going both directions, and any player who receives only one hand squeeze dies and leaves the circle. So the circle keeps getting smaller and smaller. The Murderer can kill as quickly or as slowly as he wants.

As for the other players, their objective is to guess who the Murderer is before they all end up dead. Players do this with a simple accusation: “Kate, are you the Murderer?” Since Kate’s not the Murderer in this game, she shakes her head no, and then the player who made the false accusation has to leave the circle. Figuring out the Murderer is trickier than you might think, because players have no idea where the hand-squeezes originate from, and when you watch a player die on the other side of the circle, you might not even know from which direction the killing strike came.

The game ends when someone correctly accuses Aaron as the Murderer, or when Aaron kills everyone else. Whew!

Variations: Have you tried the winks version of murder? There’s also mafia, a game with a similar theme.

What it is: A group game where you try to eliminate other players by winking at them. So, despite its spooky title, really it’s just a game that’s all about your eyes.

Best for: Anywhere from a small to a large group. Ten or more would probably be ideal.

What you need:

• Just players and a way to randomly select one player to be the Murderer. This can be slips of blank paper, a deck of cards, anything so long as the identity of the Murderer can be a secret.

How to play: First, set up your playing area by sitting everyone in a circle. This can be cross-legged on the ground or in chairs/on couches. Everyone just needs to be able to see every other player.

Then, choose one player to be the Murderer. If you have a deck of cards, pull out one card for each player. Make them all non-face cards, except for one. Shuffle and have each player pick a card, face down. Whichever player draws the face card will be the Murderer. You can do the same thing with slips of paper. Just draw an X on one and fold them all up.

When you pick the Murderer, only the Murderer should know their identity. It should be a secret to everyone else.

So once the Murderer is established, have everyone sit in a circle and announce the start of the game.

For the Murderer, the objective is to murder (i.e. wink at) as many people as possible before being caught. The Murderer can wink at whoever they want whenever they want as often as they want.

For everyone else, the objective is to not die and to catch the Murderer as quickly as possible, thus saving as many lives as possible. You catch the Murderer by calling him or her out.

So let’s set up a sample game. Bobby is the Murderer, and only he knows that. Close after the start of the game, Bobby winks at Monica, who lets out a scream and falls on the floor.

That reminds me: optional dramatic deaths. The game gets extra fun if, whenever you “die,” you die a dramatic death: fall on the floor, gasp, shout out your famous last words, etc. Adds in an element of humor and drama. At the minimum, just announce you’re dead somehow and leave the circle.

After Monica dies, another player, Alex, was watching and thinks he saw a fourth player named Lindsay wink at Monica. So Alex says, “Lindsay, are you the Murderer?” To which Lindsay has to say, no, she’s not. At that point, Alex dies from his false accusation, so now two players are out. Bobby goes on winking at players when he can catch their eye contact, killing as quickly or as slowly as he wants. Both lead to a different game dynamic.

The game ends when someone says, “Bobby, are you the Murderer?” Or, in rare cases, when Bobby kills absolutely everyone else. Then Bobby wins.

It’s a kind of balancing game: for Bobby, he doesn’t want to necessarily kill too fast or too obviously. But if he doesn’t go fast enough, it gives players more time to discover him. For everyone else, they don’t want to spend too much time making eye contact with anyone just in case it’s the Murderer. But the game involves looking in eyes to try and figure out who is winking at whom. I like this game a lot; it’s suspenseful and fun.

To start another round, draw cards again to pick a new Murderer and go!

Variations: There’s another version of this game that’s a lot of fun. And along the murder theme, you can always try mafia!

Best for: A big group, probably around 10.

What you need:

• A wipe-off board, the small-ish kinds you can hold in your hands.
• A dry erase marker and eraser
• A specialized list of Star Wars actions to act out. I provide one below.

How to play: First divide your players into two teams. Like in a regular game of pictionary or charades, each team takes turns drawing/acting for their team members only to guess.

So let’s say team 1 is up: the Rebels (who are of course playing against the Empire). Unlike regular pictionary, the Rebels will send up two players, Han and Chewie (I’m sorry, I can’t resist). One player will hold the wipe-off board and marker (Han, since Chewie’s hands are too furry). Chewie will stand next to Han and be prepared to act.

Like in pictionary and charades, no talking is allowed during the turn. At  the start of a timer, Han and Chewie pull a slip of paper with their first action to act out. It might be using the Force to lift an X-wing.

At “Go!” Han and Chewie start. They work together as a team, with Han drawing and Chewie (and also Han) acting to get their team members to guess the word.

So Han might draw an X-wing on the wipe-off board, then hold the board down low to the ground. Meanwhile, Chewie would hold out his hands, pretending to use the Force, and Han would slowly raise the drawing of the X-wing up off the ground. Get it? It’s a combination of acting and drawing that does it.

When your team members guess, try to be pretty literal with the answer matching the phrase on the card (for example, just saying “X-wing!” for the above example wouldn’t cut it). You want your team members to say the whole phrase.

When Han and Chewie finish their first phrase, they draw and act another, and keep going until the timer runs out. Oh, another rule: Han and Chewie also can’t talk with each other. So they can’t prepare or plan in advance. It’s about thinking fast and acting together as a team.

The Rebels get a point for every phrase they successfully guess during Han and Chewie’s turn. Then it would be the Empire’s turn. At the end of the game, whichever team has the most points wins.

It’s up to each team which combination of players they want to send up in groups of two. You can change the pairs of two each round, or keep them the same. Just make sure to give everyone an equal opportunity to go up.

Are there any rules I’m forgetting? Oh, I would suggest a longer time limit for the rounds for this game: maybe 1 to 2 minutes. Since the phrases are more complex, it’s nice to allow time to draw something good or act out multiple parts to a complex phrase.

Variations: For more variations on the classic game of pictionary, try mixtionary or musical pictionary.

Printables: And finally, the phrases! These were fun to compile. I did a lot of research (involving a Star Wars marathon and a lot of spell-checking on Wookieepedia). I hope you enjoy them!

Star Wars Actions

]]> https://www.thegamegal.com/2014/10/27/pictionades-pictionary-meets-charades-star-wars-version/feed/ 4 3278 https://www.thegamegal.com/2014/10/18/boo-halloween-treat-ding-dong-ditch/ https://www.thegamegal.com/2014/10/18/boo-halloween-treat-ding-dong-ditch/#comments Sat, 18 Oct 2014 21:59:06 +0000 https://www.thegamegal.com/?p=3300

What it is: It’s more of an activity or tradition than a game, but it’s a great Halloween tradition that I remember from throughout my childhood.

Best for: A whole neighborhood or community of some sort! The only requirement is everyone needs a front door. You can play with a neighborhood, a city, a church community…you could even play with dorm rooms in a college dorm.

What you need:

• Several copies of a Boo! printable, like the one I made below
• Two plates of treats or bags of candy to get the tradition started

How to play: To start, print out two copies of the Boo! printable below. Then prepare two plates of Halloween goodies, like cookies or cupcakes that look like spiders or something cute like that. (Bags of candy work, too). Then choose two neighbors or friends to Boo first.

This is a ding dong ditch activity, or a knock and run. If you don’t know how those works, you might want to read this post to get an idea.

At night, drive to your chosen friends’ houses one at a time. Carefully sneak out to the doorstep, leave the cookies and a copy of the Boo! printable, ring the doorbell, and RUN! Hurry back to the car and drive away before they see you! When they answer their door, they’ll find a plate of treats and the papers. One page is a sign with a ghost that says “WE’VE BEEN BOO’D!” The other is a paper with some instructions that starts out with this:

So when your friends get the paper, they hang the “WE’VE BEEN BOO’D” sign on their door or in their front window, choose two of their friends, and leave treats on their doors within two days. That way, the Boo sign spreads throughout the neighborhood or community exponentially until Halloween arrives! Then it’s fun to trick or treat or drive through the neighborhood and see how many people you spread the Boo to.

It’s not too late in the year if you want to start this! To give it a jump start, you might want to start out with five families or so, just to help get the ball rolling.

Printables: Here’s the printable. It has two pages: one with the instructions, and one with a ghost that says “WE’VE BEEN BOO’D!” This is the sign that people will hang in their front windows or on their doors after they’ve been Boo’d.

Enjoy, and happy Halloween!

What it is: A very flexible game with lots of adaptations.

Best for: A group of about 4 to 10.

What you need: You’ll need a list of categories (I’ve provided one below) and possibly a timer and pens and paper.

How to play: Basically the challenge is to try and think of as many items in a category as you can. An example category would be fast food.

And items in the category? Chicken nuggets, tacos, hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, McDonald’s apple pies, chicken sandwiches, and on and on. How many things can you think of?

Variations: There are many different ways you could set up your game. Here’s a few to get you started.

Like the game Scattergories (commission link), you can name as many items in a category that start with the same letter. Choose a letter from the alphabet, draw a category, set a timer, and go! For example, if the category were male names and the letter were C, you could write any of these:

• Carson
• Caleb
• Cole
• Christian
• Connor
• Carter
• Cameron

You can play on teams, individually, or as a whole group. At the end of the game, everyone takes turns reading all their answers aloud, where questionable answers can be submitted to the group to see if they’ll be allowed or not. (For example: “Camille? That’s a girl’s name!” “But I totally knew a guy named Camille once!” “OK, fine, we’ll allow it.”) If you’re playing against each other, the person who writes down the most names wins. (One variation is to have everyone cross off any name that someone else wrote down, too. That way the person with the most unique answers wins.)

You could also play the above version, but without the restriction of a letter of the alphabet. Any boy name, for example, would work for the above example. Then follow the same rules for the rest of the game.

Another variation which works really well for car rides or killing time can be played one word at a time. In this variation, you pick a category and then take turns saying something from that category, one player at a time. The first person who can’t think of a word that hasn’t already been said is out of the game, and you start a new round with a new category. (The game first letter, last letter is an even more challenging variation of this.)

You could of course use your list of categories to play the pool game categories or a similar game.

What other rules or variations can you come up with?

Printables: Here’s the list of categories! It’s a few pages long, so hopefully it gives you lots of categories to choose from for all of your game-playing needs.

Categories

What it is: A road trip game, one of those seek-and-find games that gives you something to do on long car trips.

Best for: A long car trip across state borders, for however many players you want (even one).

What you need: A list of all 50 states, or a piece of paper or some way to write the states you find down. I have a free printable below.

How to play: The game is pretty simple: as you’re on your road trip, look out the window at the cars you see. Find the state name on each license plate, and try to spot a license plate from every state. You can cross states off of a list you already have, write them down, or just keep a list in your memory. You can play competitively, with each person in the car playing against everyone else. The player with the most states crossed off at the end of the trip wins. You could create teams. Or you could play cooperatively as a whole car or bus together.

It’s a pretty ambitious goal, I’ll admit. (My list includes Alaska and Hawaii, so I think you really might have to do some traveling to cross every state off.) I think it would be cool to save this list for multiple car trips, especially if you have several coming up. At the start of the summer, for example, you could print off the list and plan to take it on every car trip you take that year. You could even do it over a lifetime. See how long it takes you to cross off every state!

Printables: Here’s a printable I made that lists each of the 50 U.S. states. You can use it when you’re playing the license plate search game to cross off the states you find.

Variations: If you’re looking for other road trip I-spy games, try the alphabet game or its object-only variation.

What it is: A reverse game of hide and seek where, instead of one person seeking while everyone else hides, you have one person hiding while everyone else seeks.

Best for: At least 6 players or so, up to a group maybe twice that size.

What you need: A place to play. This is an ideal indoor game, but could also be played outside in a yard or park as long as there are lots of good places to hide.

How to play: First, set the boundaries for your playing area. Then choose one player to be It. We’ll call him Tim. Everyone else but Tim closes their eyes and counts out loud together to a predetermined number, like 50. (The larger your playing area is, the higher the number can be.) While everyone is counting, Tim goes and hides. He can choose anywhere he wants, like inside a blanket closet, for example. Then he sits quietly and waits.

After the rest of the players are done counting, they call out, “Ready or not, here we come!” And then they start to seek. The seeking is done every-man-for-himself style: no teams, just individual players looking for Tim by themselves. Everyone tries to find Tim first.

Say Anna is the first player to open the blanket closet and find Tim. First of all, she’ll want to make sure no other player is watching her. Then as quietly as she can, she slips into the blanket closet and hides along with him. Now Tim and Anna both are as still and quiet as they can be, still trying to avoid being found.

Maybe Louis is the next player to happen along and find Tim’s hiding spot. Now he squeezes in, too, and the three of them hide until they’re joined by a fourth, and a fifth… And everyone hides right along with Tim. If the blanket closet runs out of room, players do their best to hide close by, but it’s best if everyone can fit into Tim’s original hiding spot. (Are you seeing why the game is called sardines now?)

The last person to find Tim is the new It, and a new round starts!

It’s a fun game and (good for adults needing some peace) a quiet game. It’s kind of eerie in a way, too, which I guess is part of the fun. But when there’s 10 of you and you’re all searching for one hiding person and you’re looking and looking and start realizing the other players searching with you are dwindling and dwindling, and you have no idea where they’re all disappearing to, and you keep searching, and finally you open the blanket closet to see all 10 of your friends crammed in there – yeah, all part of the fun.

It’s also kind of hilarious, trying to fit as many people as you can into what’s usually a small hiding place. Sometimes the hiding place is larger, though, like in a walk-in pantry, and that’s perfectly fine too (and a little easier). It’s always, fun, too, to hide along with a group of your friends and cover your mouths and try not to giggle. It takes some of the lonely suspense (which I’m not a fan of) out of the normal version of hide and seek.

Variations: For some other games along the theme of hiding and seeking, check out the classic hide and seek, as well as kick the can, hit the dirt, and capture the flag.

Man, typing all of this up is making me want to go and play! I haven’t played sardines in far too long.

Happy hiding!

What it is: A version of a scavenger hunt where you take pictures of things (and often yourself doing fun things).

Best for: A small to large group, maybe 4 to 10 people.

What you need: A camera and a list of things to take pictures of! (see bottom of the post for my free printable list).

How to play: Just like other scavenger hunts, the goal is to go down the list and cross off as many items as you can. Other than that basic rule, the game is super easy to customize however you’d like. Let me show you an example.

This is a scavenger hunt list I made for the mall. I might use it for a birthday party for a group of 13-year-old girls. If the group is smaller (say 5 girls), I’d give them all one list and set them loose in the mall to take their photos, telling them to meet back at the foot court in two hours or something like that. If the group were bigger (say 10 girls), I’d make two smaller groups of 5 and give each team a copy of the list. Then I’d make a contest out of it. The team who crosses off the most items in the allotted time period wins (with quality of the photos taken into consideration).

A great way to end a photo scavenger hunt is a photo slideshow at home. With technology today, it can be relatively easy to show pictures on an iPad or a laptop or even a TV, and then everyone can watch all the pictures and laugh and comment.

So basically, you need a list of things to take pictures off. Slightly embarrassing photo setups are always fun (like take a picture of your group dancing in the middle of the food court). Use my printables below or get creative and make your own! Then you set your ground rules, including things like:

• Duration of the game
• Boundaries
• Teams
• Whether you’re going for quality or quantity

Then play and have a blast! I think photo scavenger hunts work great for date nights or youth activities. Ha, actually, one of my and my husband’s first dates was a photo scavenger hunt that was such a phenomenal success, we realized how much we liked each other and ended up where we are now.

Happy photographing!

Printables: The photo scavenger hunts I’ve included are for different settings: at the mall (designed for teens or older), at the park (designed for kids or older), at home (designed for younger children), and an alphabet hunt (suitable for anyone). If you have a requests for another list, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do!

Oh, P.S., for the alphabet scavenger hunt, what I was thinking is you take pictures of objects that happen to look like letters of the alphabet, either objects that you set up or that you just find (like two sticks crossed to make an X, or a door handle that looks like an S).

What it is: Basically a skill-less game used to randomly select one player to win a prize. Often played at school carnivals or holiday parties.

Best for: About 10 players.

What you need: You’ll need some prizes for your winners. Traditionally, the prize is a cake for each winner (hence the name “cake walk”). You would need a cake for every round you want to play. Other prize ideas could be cupcakes (smaller than cakes, but the same idea), toys, or candy.

You’ll also need some laminated papers with numbers on them and slips of paper with corresponding numbers in a jar or bowl (and I’ve made a free version you can download if you want). Finally, you’ll need some way to play music, like an iPod with speakers.

How to play: First, there’s the game setup. Decide how many players you want to include in each round: that will be the number of laminated paper numbers you tape on the floor. (The printable I’ve made goes up to 20). Tape your numbers in a big circle on the floor. (Tip: If you don’t have laminated numbers, use packing tape to completely cover them so they don’t peel up when kids step on them.)

Once you have your numbers down, your cakes ready for your winners, and your music ready to play, invite your players! When I’ve played at carnivals or school fairs, the cake walk booth stays open until enough players come to join, then the person running the booth starts the game. Also, you don’t need a player on each number to start the game. You can do a round with as little as three or four players.

To start, have each player select a number to start on. Play the music. As the music plays, everyone walks around the circle, stepping from one numbered circle to another (or walking in between them). As soon as the music stops, everyone stands on the number he or she is closest to. Then draw a number, read it out, and the person standing on that number gets a cake! Hooray! If no one is standing on the number, draw another until you find a winner. Then you can start a new round (after the winner leaves the game; it’d be a little excessive for someone to win two cakes.)

Pretty simple, right? Am I forgetting anything? If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! And here’s the free cake walk numbers printable:

Cake walk printable

Best for: A classroom full of students! I would say you need about 10 people at a minimum, to however many can fit comfortably in your room.

What you need: Just players and a room with four corners! Ooh, actually, if you were in a hexagon-shaped room, you could play six corners…but that’s beyond the point.

How to play: First assign each corner of your room a number one through four, like this:

The numbers will stay the same and everyone will need to remember them.

Then select one player to be It, like Melanie. Melanie stands in the middle of the room, closes her eyes, and counts to ten (or another specified number). While she’s counting, all of the other players silently move to a corner of the room. Each player can pick whichever corner they want.

When Melanie is done counting, she keeps her eyes closed and then tries to guess which corner has the most people, based on the sounds she might have heard when she was counting. Say she heard a lot of rustling and banging over by the door in corner number 4. She would say out loud, “Four!” Then all of the players in corner 4 would be out and would go sit down at their desks. Then Melanie begins another round, counting to ten again while players move to whichever corner they want. Then Melanie picks a corner, the players in that corner are out, and a new round starts. Play continues until one player is left – the new It.

Strategies: You obviously want to be quiet when picking a corner. You don’t want Melanie to know that your corner is occupied! But, if you have time and if you move fast, maybe you could throw her off – make a noise over by corner 3 before hurrying silently back to corner 2. (The corner 3 people wouldn’t like it much, though.) When I’ve played, we’ve mostly tried to move as silently as possible and avoided too much “strategy.” There’s just something about this simple game that’s fun enough on its own: the countdown, hurrying to pick a corner, moving silently with everyone else, making eye contact and trying not to giggle, the suspense, the last-minute mind changes where you dart across the room. Ah, good times in Mrs. Pritchard’s third grade class.

Does anyone have any variations or alternate rules to share?

Happy Thanksgiving! This is one of my family’s favorite holidays. Time together with family, good food, and taking time to think about what we’re grateful for: it’s a wonderful combination for a holiday.

I try to post a different game or variation for each holiday, and for Thanksgiving this year I thought it would be fun to do a Thanksgiving version of celebrities. Quick, click the link to learn how to play so you can read about the Thanksgiving version!

OK, read it? Good. I think this would be best with a large group (around 15-20 people). The Thanksgiving spin is, instead of having players write down celebrities’ names, have players write down something they’re grateful for. I made a printable you could use to do this easily. Just cut up and pass out the slips:

Try to encourage players to use their creativity and write down unique or specific answers. (For example, the game won’t be very fun if everyone writes my family, even if it’s what we’re all grateful for most.) Here’s some answers that might be more suitable for the game:

• chocolate chip cookie dough
• Annelise’s high-pitched laugh
• my latest favorite song, “Zorbing” by Stornoway
• weekly date nights with my husband
• beds with clean new sheets
• going to wedding receptions
• hearing Carson tell airplane stories
• Mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls
• Shelby’s free babysitting
• Amazon two-day shipping

(All things that I’m grateful for this year. :))

At the bottom of the slips to print out, I typed “Don’t be boring!” to encourage all your players to write down good responses. (You can cut that part off if you want, though.)

After you collect all the responses, fold them up, put them in a bowl, and play just like you would play celebrities. As you play you can find out who wrote down what and perhaps have some conversations on what you’re all grateful for (in between uncontrollable laughter, of course).

I haven’t played this variation yet (I’m planning on playing it this year), so if you play, let us all know how it works and if you made any adjustments! Happy Thanksgiving and I hope you all enjoy the holiday!

What it is: A good way to pass the time when you’re flying somewhere. Look for items on a list and cross them off when you see them.

Best for: One to 5 players.

What you need: A list of things to find in an airport! You could make your own, or I have some free printable ones below. Also a pen.

How to play: It’s easy! When you’re sitting in an airport waiting for your plane, or waiting in an extra long security line, or stuck somewhere with a longer-than-expected layover, pass the time by doing a little scavenger hunting. Make or obtain a list of common things you might see in an airport (the items could be as easy as an airplane or a person with a hat, for younger players; or much harder, like the Southwest Shamu plane). When you’re in the airport, keep your list and a pen handy and cross things off as you see them. First player to cross off all the items (or the player to cross off the most) wins!

Rules and Variations: This is a very adaptable game. It’s a great one-player or two-player game, and you can play competitively or cooperatively. You could even stretch out one game over a whole trip or multiple trips. If you want to play competitively, you probably want to set up some specific rules (when to start looking, when to stop looking, whether photographs of things count, etc.).

Printables: We’re flying this Thanksgiving for my sister’s wedding. (Incidentally, the airplane illustration above is in her wedding colors – I guess I have her color scheme on my brain after some fun clothes shopping for me, my husband, and our two kids.) In preparation, I made these scavenger hunts and I want to share them with you! Feel free to download and use. There are two lists: the first one is pretty easy, and the second one is harder. Just print, cut, and use whichever fits your needs! If you do use them, I’d love to hear any feedback on how they work. Happy flying!

Airport Scavenger Hunt

What it is: I Spy Bingo is a version of classic bingo. In classic bingo, everyone has a 5 x 5 grid of randomly placed numbers. Someone reads off a number at random, and players look for the number on their playing card and mark it off if they find it. Players try to get 5 marked-off squares in a row. First person to get 5 in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) shouts out “Bingo!” and wins. In I Spy Bingo, instead of listening for numbers called out loud, you’re watching for things you might see in real life.

Best for: 1 to 6 players.

What you need: Everyone will need a game card. You can make your own or use my free printable ones! (see end of post). Everyone will also need a pen or something else to use to mark off squares (like candy, especially M&Ms, which are our favorites). You also need somewhere specific to play: in this case, a Halloween costume party, or the day at school when everyone comes dressed up, or trick-or-treating night…basically anywhere you can see lots of people in Halloween costumes.

How to play: Halloween costume I Spy Bingo is pretty simple. Everyone gets a 5 x 5 grid of squares. In each square, write a costume you think you might see someone wearing this Halloween. (My free printable cards already have costumes written out.) Once you’re at your party or school day or wherever you’re going to play, just keep a lookout at all of the cool Halloween costumes going by and cross off any costume you see on your card. First player to get 5 in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) shouts “BOO!” (instead of “bingo”) and wins!

You can also play the blackout version – where you have to cross off all your squares, not just 5 in a row, to win. Other than that, you can set up your own rules however you’d like! Here are some suggestions.

On the printable cards I made below, some of the costumes might overlap (e.g., fairy and Disney character; if you saw someone dressed as Tinkerbell, that could count for both). But I say you can only use each individual costume to cross off one square on your card. However, it’s up to you if you want to use Tinkerbell to cross off fairy or Disney character, bringing in a slight element of strategy. But if you do see two or more Tinkerbells walking around on Halloween night (from what I can gather, it’s a pretty popular costume), you can cross off both. You might have to settle some disputes as you play (like whether Princess Leia counts as a Disney princess), but that’s all part of the fun.

You can set a time limit, or just make the game last the duration of the party. You can play at a costume party, at school, or Halloween night (especially if you’re the one stuck at home alone handing out the candy. Why not call up another friend at home and have them play, too? Text each other pictures of your finished card when you win). Play by yourself or with a small group; it’s a very adaptable game. You can even have prizes for the winner(s), like pre-purchased candy bars, or some sweet deal like winner gets all the Snickers bars of the Halloween candy haul. Make it fit your group and make it fun!

Variations: There are lots of variations to I Spy Bingo. In addition to holidays or holiday parties, you can play on a road trip, in the airport, at the mall while people watching… I have some other ideas I’m working on that I’m excited to post, so stay tuned!

Printables: To make your Halloween Bingo easy, here’s some free printables! The first one comes with 6 unique cards already filled out. (But even if you want to play with more than 6 people, it would probably work just fine as long as there’s enough variation in the costumes you all see). The second one is blank so you can fill in your own costumes. This would be a great way to play and encourage creativity. Just come up with some basic rules, especially if you’re playing with a lot of people, and let the fun begin!

Halloween Costume Bingo

Halloween Costume Bingo: blank cards

Happy Halloween! I hope you all enjoy!

What it is: A really easy, adaptable game for all sorts of circumstances. Mostly it’s fun to ask get to know you questions (especially quirky or unusual ones) to family and friends.

Best for: 6 to 9 players.

What you need: Mostly just questions to ask! I’ve provided a free printable list of some below. You could also think of your own. Or I know there’s many commercial sets of conversation-starter type questions you can buy. Optional: Paper and pens.

How to play: The ways to play with get-to-know-you questions are endless. The easiest way is to just take turns asking questions to each other and answering them. You can all sit in a circle and take turns picking a question, reading it aloud, and then each giving an answer in turn. You could also take turns asking specific questions to specific people only. I’ve even used questions like this as journal-writing prompts for myself when I didn’t know what else to write about. If you have a creative set of questions, the good uses for them go on and on.

One of the favorite ways I like to play this game with my friends and family is to answer questions and then guess who gave which answer. This can be done a few different ways. One way that works well with a big group (like from 20 to 30) is to use paper and pens and have everyone write down his or her answer to a question. Then gather up the questions, have someone read them out loud, and together as a group discuss who you think gave which answer (this can be done informally, hopefully with a good amount of laughter). With a big group like this, the best way to do it is to ask several questions at a time, maybe 5 to 10. You could even just hand out a survey with the questions already written down. Then have each player fill out the survey, gather them up, read all the answers out loud, and guess together as a group who filled out that survey. You could even eliminate the guessing part and just read aloud the answers for fun. This could be a great icebreaker game.

Another way to play that’s better with a smaller group (perhaps about 8 people) is to take turns and keep score. It might look like this: Adam is playing with his family. He picks a question, he asks it aloud, everyone write down his or her answer, and then Adam’s brother Stuart collects the cards and reads them to Adam out loud. After Adam has heard all the answers, he has to correctly match each answer with each player. He gets a point for each one he matches correctly. Whoever gets the most points after everyone gets a turn wins. We played this way with my husband’s family last Christmas, and it was sooo fun. We all laughed harder than we had in months! It’s a good way to get more competitive and encourage creativity (since you’re trying to avoid making it obvious which answers are yours). You could even do more than one question at a time.

Variations: What other ways do you like to play with get-to-know-you questions? They’re great discussion starters or time fillers. My husband and I love to ask them to each other in car trips or on out-for-ice-cream dates.

Printables: If you want to print out some questions you can use, I’ve made some free printables for you! Just cut along the lines and you’ll have strips of questions you can fold up and put in a bowl or have people draw. You could also just read them aloud or use the list for ideas. The second list has some simpler questions that might be better suited for young children. So enjoy!

Get to know you questions

Simple get to know you questions

HEY! Wait! I just had an idea! Does anyone want to play? What if I pick a few questions now and we all answer them? Everyone loves to answer fun questions about themselves, right? Well, let’s play! Join in with a comment if you like with the answers to the questions below! I’d love to hear your answers.

1. If money didn’t matter, what food or snack would you buy at the movie theater? Those nachos with the fake cheese! Mmm, fake cheese…usually so gross, but somehow when it’s at a movie theater or baseball game on nachos, so good. A close runner-up to the nachos is good old-fashioned movie popcorn.
2. If you had a month of free time to learn a new hobby, what would it be? Dancing! I’ve always wished I could dance.
3. What’s your favorite way to eat a potato? Twice-baked all the way!

What it is: It’s not really a game; this is more of a family tradition/activity. But it’s one that my family did for a good portion of my childhood, and one me and my siblings all looked forward to at Christmas time. It’s a fun gift-giving activity where, over the course of 12 days, you give gifts secretly to another family or friend. (We called it a ding-dong-ditch gift approach; I’ve also heard it called ring-and-run.) It’s a great way to feel the Christmas spirit of giving and service, and fun for kids, too.

Best for: Two families: your family to give the gifts and another family to receive them.

What you need: You’ll need 12 specialized gifts, one for each of the 12 days before Christmas. These can be highly variable or personalized depending on your family or the family you’re gifting to. You start with gift 12 on December 13 and work down from there to gift 1 on December 24 (one day until Christmas). When we did this tradition, we always used cute tags to mark each gift, and each tag had a number and said “Christmas is…” followed by a different noun, like “Christmas is joy” or “Christmas is love.” The last gift, gift number 1, always said “Christmas is Christ.”

On day 12, the gift would be 12 of something: maybe 12 oranges, or a dozen cookies. On day 11, it might be 11 small ornaments. On day 10, 10 candy canes, and so on. The exact gifts would vary by year and by the family we were giving them to, but one gift was always the same: on day 1, we gave a framed picture of Jesus Christ.

When we could, we matched the gift to the tag: for example, for “Christmas is giving” on day 4 we might give 4 rolls of wrapping paper. Not all of the days matched perfectly, but that was okay. Here’s a sample of what the tags and gifts might look like one year:

Again, the gifts varied year by year. We kept the family in mind. A lot of times we gave useful gifts. Some other gift ideas might be any baked goods (cookies, brownies, fudge), food (Little Debbie snacks, bread, popcorn, cans of soup, fruit, 2-liter bottles of soda), small toys, hot chocolate mugs, pads of paper, Christmas decorations, gift-wrapping tape, cookie cutters… even rolls of paper towels (useful!). You can get creative and give gifts you think the family would like and use. And they don’t have to be big, either. Even small things (like tape for wrapping presents or hot chocolate mix) can be a special gift, especially because this family will be receiving one gift every day for 12 days.

A tip on the gifts that my mom shared with me: she always tried to gather, wrap, tag, and prepare the gifts all before December 13, before we even started. That way we weren’t scrambling around last-minute getting gifts together. And, after you’ve secretly dropped off gifts for 5 days, it’s not like you can all the sudden stop or put it off a day; the family will be expecting you! But, come to think of it…I can remember at least a couple times when we kind of missed a day and gave two gifts the next day, or dropped it super late at night and didn’t ring the bell so they’d just find it in the morning. But we were a busy family of six kids…of course we weren’t perfect.

The delivery: After you’ve prepared your gifts, you’re ready to deliver! Start on December 13 with gift 12 so you’ll end on December 24 with gift 1. To deliver the gifts secretly, go to your chosen family’s house each night, then choose one or two people to sneak the gift quietly up to the doorstep, ring the bell, and make a run for it! Don’t get caught! On Christmas Eve, you can go as a whole family, ring the doorbell, show who you are, and present your gift of Jesus Christ, maybe with a message or a Christmas carol.

Printables: So because this tradition really is so special to me, I wanted to make it easy for others to do it, too. So I made these free printables of the 12 “Christmas is…” tags. Click the picture to download the PDF.

Now because I think you really do need to customize the gifts/days based on your family and the family you’re giving the gifts to, I left the numbers separate (on the last page) so you can cut the numbers out and paste them on the tag you want to use for that day. For example, say you just happen to have a Christmas CD with 12 tracks ready to give. Glue the “12” number on “Christmas is Music” and you’re set. So, even though the tags you’re printing don’t look like this now, when you cut out the numbers and past them on, the tags will look like this:

I also included a page of blanks in case you want to write in your own ending to the sentence “Christmas is…” Also, I’d recommend printing these on card stock, or mounting them on colored card stock if you print on normal printer paper. It’s nicer that way.

Variations: There are lots of ways you could vary this tradition. If you don’t like the ding-dong-ditch aspect, just give the gifts to your family openly. Or you could even do it with cards long-distance through the mail.

As for the theme, you don’t have to do the “Christmas is…” tags. You could use the song “12 Days of Christmas” as your theme instead. We never did it that way, but Natalie at Chronicles of a Babywise Mom has some great ideas on how to do it. In the same post she also talks about another variation that we never did but that sounds really neat: having each gift over the 12 days be a different piece to a new Nativity set you buy for the family. That way you can also include scriptures about the Nativity story with each piece. I think that would be a neat variation to do.

Finally, I came across this story about a family that does the 12 Days of Christmas for their neighbors. It’s a neat, touching story about loving our neighbors – what I think Christmas is really all about.

My memories: What makes this tradition so special to me is the memories I have of it. Each December, we’d sit in a family meeting and choose one family to secretly give our 12 days of gifts to. It might be someone we knew needed some extra love. It might be one of our friends from school. It might be someone we knew well or someone we didn’t know that that well at all. But we’d all decide together on who the family would be.

My mom would prepare the gifts, and then, starting on December 13, we drove as a family after dark to our chosen family’s home. Dad parked down the street, a few houses away, usually with the headlights off. One or two of us (we took turns each night) would quietly get out of the car with the first gift, sneak up to the family’s door step, put the gift down, and sprint away. Whew, the adrenaline rush! Then we’d jump back in the car and quickly drive away, hoping we weren’t seen. Dad always circled around the block slowly before we cautiously drove in front of the house to make sure the gift was gone. It was great fun for us as kids, and always left us very excited, with lots of stories to share. Of course, we had to keep the secret from the family if we saw them during the day, which was always fun, too. I remember once when we did my friend’s family, I was driving her to her house one night and pretended I didn’t know the way, just to throw her off the trail…as if I didn’t know; we had been driving secretly to her house at night for days! Some families got really into trying to catch us, too, and it would get harder and harder to ding-dong-ditch their house. (I remember one particularly zealous family; we had to recruit neighbors and friends to drop off the gifts to them because they waited so diligently by the door and chased us down the street.) Sometimes we were discovered, but we always tried to keep our identity a secret until the last day, Christmas Eve, which was always the best day.

On Christmas Eve, we’d drive as a family, but this time we all got out of the car together, walked to the porch, and rang the doorbell. When they answered, we presented the last gift, the picture of the Savior Jesus Christ, and sometimes sang a carol (but…probably not that often; my family’s not particularly well-known for our singing). Then it was fun and neat to admit our secret identity and talk to our family face to face. We always left feeling good and happy inside. It was part of our Christmas traditions for many years.

I hope you enjoy! If you want to start this tradition this year, December 13 will be your first drop-off day: you still have time! Merry Christmas and, however you celebrate the season, I hope you can find the joy and happiness that come not just from playing games and having fun, but from giving to others.

What it is: A simple, flexible time-killing activity for anyone who loves music and guessing games.

Best for: 2 to 8 players.

What you need: Nothing!

How to play: This is just a simple guessing game involving singing, but singing a song only one word at a time. One person, like Lucy, starts out by thinking up a song. Then Lucy starts singing the song out loud, but only the first word.

So let’s say Lucy chooses the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” She would start singing the first note: “Take…” Then there are several different ways you can play. You can have other players guess what song Lucy is singing by adding what they think is the next word. Ryan, for example, might think Lucy is singing “Take on Me” (he’s an eighties fan). So Ryan would start singing “on…” Lucy could either shake her head no and let other players continue to guess, or, for a more fluid game, the song could change and now all the other players have to guess what Ryan is singing. The song might change several times as players take turns adding notes and words to what they think the song is. You can have play go in a circle, or just have players sing out in any order when they think they know the next word.

Variations: Another similar game you can play is when one person says a word (like take, for example), and the next player has to think of a song with that word in it. You can play with song titles or song lyrics in general. We played this a lot as just kind of a time-killer, not keeping score or having much structure, but just shouting out words and singing songs as they occurred to us.

Some more similar games are Name that tune and What’s the name of that song?

So if you like music and have friends who know a lot of songs, they can be some fun games to play to pass the time or try to stump each other.

Best for: As little as 2 or as many as a carful of people.

What you need: A journey in a car. A long road trip on roads you don’t drive every day works best. Then just a car and people to play! Optional: Paper and pen, or a way to keep score. (It was paper and pen when I grew up, but today it would totally be my iPhone.)

How to play: This game involves spotting and guessing the numbers on those road signs that say how many miles to a certain city, the green ones, you know? Like this:

The point of the game is to correctly guess the next mile number for a certain city, usually your destination.

So say your car is taking a trip to Dallas. Once you’ve seen one sign that says how many miles are left to Dallas (like Dallas: 215), everyone would take a guess as to the number that will be on the next sign that says how many miles to Dallas. Logically, this could be any number lower than 215. You can use your experience or knowledge or just luck to try to figure out exactly how many miles away the next sign will be placed. But I can tell you from playing this game as a kid, it’s not always what you think! It’s not like there’s always a pattern or a rule, especially as cities and landscapes vary (and this all just makes the game more fun).

So everyone puts in a guess for the number on the next mile sign – you can write them down or just have everyone remember. Let’s say a hypothetical car of people make these guesses:

• Jamie – 200
• Louis – 154
• Ann – 194
• Jeff – 172

Then everyone can go about other activities, but make sure at least one person is keeping a lookout for the next sign. Once it’s spotted (Dallas: 160), figure out who won that round. For us, the winner was simply the person who had the closest guess, whether it’s lower or higher. In the above example, this would mean Louis wins. I know a lot of times people play number guessing games like this and make a rule that the winner is the closest number that didn’t go under or something like that, but we liked to keep it simple. You can certainly play with rules as complicated as you like.

So Louis would win that round. You can keep a running score pad of who wins each round, or just play for fun and not keep score. But that round would be followed by another, and another, until you reach your destination. Even when you’re driving in the middle of nowhere, you can still play. The signs just might be really far apart, but that’s okay. Closer to cities, the signs might be only a couple of miles apart, and it’s always fun when that throws everyone for a loop. You can guess but you never know for sure, which is why it’s fun. The game is a good way, too, of tracking the distance until you reach your destination, maybe cutting down on the “Are we there yet?” questions.

Another thing: Our family road trips were often so long that we couldn’t play with our final destination right away. So we’d choose bigger cities on the way to play with until we were close enough to use the final destination. (For example, Dallas, then Oklahoma City, then Wichita…) Just make sure everyone agrees on the next city as you guess.

Rules: One rule we had was that everyone had to put in their guess for the next sign before too much time passed. For example, after passing a Dallas: 215 sign and then gathering up the next round of guesses, there were always some of us who liked to delay as long as possible, realizing that the more miles we drove, the better idea we’d have of the next number on the sign. But this was considered cheating, so guesses for the next sign had to be in before a specified time (like a minute). Otherwise your guess is invalid. However, if you wanted to do away with this rule, you definitely could: Then each person can kind of gamble as to how long they want to wait to guess. Wait too long and you might risk passing a sign without guessing at all. But wait long enough and you could have a big advantage over the other players. Come to think of it, I think we played that way sometimes, too. Either way is fun.

Also, when making guesses, no duplicate numbers: if you want to guess 160 but someone already guessed it, too bad. You have to choose a different number. (It was legal to guess just one number lower or higher, which was often a good strategy.) Guesses are first-come, first-serve, which was why we always said our guesses out loud at least, even if we didn’t write them on paper.

Variations: If you’re hardcore, you could keep score by not just writing down the winner of each round, but the number of miles by which each guess was off. Then at the end you total up each person’s miles, and the person with the lowest score wins. For example, take the above list of guesses again:

• Jamie – 200
• Louis – 154
• Ann – 194
• Jeff – 172

If the right answer was 160, that means each person would be assigned a number of how far they missed the mark:

• Jamie – 40 (200 minus 160)
• Louis – 6 (160 minus 154)
• Ann – 34
• Jeff – 12

Those numbers would be the scores you write down for each player for that round. To be honest, that’s way too much math for my taste ;-), but if you like a more competitive game and your addition and subtraction, it might be a fun way to play.

However you play, happy road tripping!

Best for: One person or a smaller group, maybe during a time when you need to be quiet.

What you need: Everyone needs paper and a pen or pencil. Optional: colored pencils, crayons, markers, or other supplies for making your dream house pretty.

How to play: Really, it’s a simple activity. You just draw your dream house! And when you’re a kid (or an adult), you can let your imagination run wild, which is where the fun comes in. I thought the best way to show this activity would be an example, so imagine how happy I was when, during the move my family recently completed, I was going through a box of old memories and found this:

I wish I had dated it! My best guess is that I drew it when I was 7 or 8? But this is exactly what I’m talking about! Usually my sisters and I drew kind of a floor plan layout like this, and of course our houses were always ginormous and held all sorts of cool extras. Which seemed to mostly be themed rooms: a party room, a toy room, a ferris wheel room, a rock climbing room, a pet room, a maze room, a museum room, a candy room, of course…oh, and a manatee room. (My sisters and I were in love with manatees. We thought they were the coolest things ever.) There also has to be a mini airport, of course, and indoor swimming pool. Anyway, I’m so glad I found this priceless drawing. Maybe I can convince my husband to build this floor plan for us one day.

And as a bonus, here’s another, more recent example. I think I drew this shortly after my husband and I were married; I was babysitting some younger cousins and wanted to show them one of my favorite drawing activities. So, since I was older this one is of course more realistic…(uh, kind of…)

Notice I kept the indoor swimming pool (this time with a dolphin) and now have a private helicopter pad instead of a mini airport. And complete with home theater, exercise room, large kitchen, hot tob, play room, and star-gazing deck, this dream home is perfect. Oh, and slides to reach the lower levels. Who hasn’t wanted a house with slides at one point?

Anyway, this second drawing shows another way you can draw your dream home: as a cut-away side view instead of a bird’s-eye view. And you can use words to label rooms (like in the first drawing), or you can just draw (like in the second). Either way, whatever you want to draw, go for it! Draw your dream home. Adding as many details as possible is always fun.

Variations: We often played this with sidewalk chalk, too, except it was more of a “draw your dream room.” Each of us would take one large square of the driveway (the squares formed by the seams in the concrete) and pretend it was our room, drawing in beds, dressers, rugs, and usually bean bag chairs and lava lamps (things we always wanted but never had), all from a bird’s-eye view. Then you can play house in your new room. My husband also played a similar game in talking version called build a cabin in your mind.

What it is: A game played outside on a playground, perfect for recess at school. (For me, it brings back all sorts of great memories of fourth grade.)

Best for: 6 to 8 players.

What you need: A good playground. The more things to climb on, the better. Even best if there are isolated toys at the playground that you can’t reach without touching the ground.

How to play: First, choose one player to be It (we’ll call her Monica). Monica stands on the playground with her eyes closed and counts to ten. While she’s counting, all of the other players run quietly to the playground equipment and climb on something so they’re no longer touching the ground.

After Monica reaches ten, she keeps her eyes closed but moves towards the playground equipment. The object of the game is for Monica to tag another player so Monica is no longer It. The other players try to avoid being tagged. Rules: Monica can’t open her eyes, and she can’t leave the ground. (So since Monica is walking around a playground with her eyes closed, make sure you play safely: no running for Monica, she should walk with her arms outstretched to avoid crashing into anything, and make sure you’re playing in a safe area.)

So it might seem like a kind of hard game for Monica, but there are some tricks she can use, and some other ways to get someone else to be It.

First, the other players aren’t prohibited from touching the ground, but if Monica catches someone else standing on the ground or even touching the ground, that person is It. If Monica suspects someone of touching the ground, she calls out “Monkey on the ground!” Say Timmy was touching the ground, trying to run from one piece of playground equipment to another. Timmy would be the new It, and Monica would open her eyes and join the other players.

If Monica calls out “Monkey on the ground!” but no one is touching the ground, all of the other players in unison have to call out, “Out of town!” to let Monica know that she’s still It – and to give Monica a hint as to the players’ whereabouts. (Monica can even call out “Monkey on the ground!” even if she doesn’t suspect anyone’s on the ground, just to hear everyone’s voices for a hint.)

So Monica shouldn’t be at too much of a disadvantage, and should be able to tag someone else so they become it.

Though more rare, it’s possible that Monica could call “Monkey on the ground!” and more than one person is on the ground. In this case, either all of the people on the ground become It together, or they play rock-paper-scissors to decide who’s It.

Ways to cheat: When you play, you’ll want to watch out for these ways to cheat and make sure everyone’s playing honestly. First of all, Monica (or the person who’s It) can’t call out “Monkey on the ground!” too often, like every five seconds. That’s cheating.

Also, the players can’t be too good – that is, they can’t all just climb up to the very top of the equipment and just stay there silently. They need to move around some, even touch the ground every once in a while. They can also call out and make noise to tease the person who’s It (and make it slightly easier).

Finally, there was always that one kid I played with who would wear dark sunglasses every time he was It. As if we didn’t know he was peeking…seriously. So no dark sunglasses for the person who’s It.

Variations: This game is kind of like the pool game Marco Polo (watch for a post coming soon), but on a playground instead of in the pool. I like monkey on the ground better, though.

What it is: Next to tag, hide and seek is probably one of the most basic kid games out there. It can be played indoors or outdoors and is easily adaptable for lots of ages and playing areas.

Best for: From as little as 3 or 4 to as many as 20 players.

What you need: You’ll need somewhere to play that has places to hide. This could be almost anywhere: inside a house, in a yard or neighborhood, in a park, in the library (if your public library happens to host a fun lock-in over the summer as a reward to kids who read)…basically anywhere but a big open field or gym.

How to play: Hide and seek is simple. First, set the boundaries for your playing area. Is it one room, one house, one yard, a whole neighborhood? Make sure everyone’s clear on the boundaries at the beginning. Then gather all your players together, choose one person, like Jack, to be It, and have It count out loud to a designated number, such as 20. (The number can be as low as 10, for really young kids in a small room, or as high as 60 or more for older kids in a bigger playing area.) While Jack counts, all of the other players quietly sneak away to hide. Once the other players have hidden, they must stay put until they are found. Everyone tries to hide, silently hoping that Jack will never find them…

Once Jack is done counting, he opens his eyes, calls out loud, “Ready or not, here I come!” and then starts to seek. He searches all over the playing area for the other players. All he has to do is spot someone (not necessarily tag them or anything) and then they’re found. If Jack needs help finding those last few players who had really good hiding spots, the people who are found can help him.

Once everyone has been found (including that last small sneaky player who always gets the best spots and is always last to be found), the game starts over with a new person as It. For us this was usually the first person Jack found (kind of a punishment for choosing such a lame hiding place, I guess). Then play as many rounds as you want!

Variations: Hide and seek was never my favorite game. Too quiet, too slow – and the suspense, fear, and tension of hiding and waiting to be found pretty much always gave me an anxiety attack. You could change the rules a little and allow players, once they’ve hid, to move around and find new hiding spots, at the risk of being seen by It when they move. Or for some more exciting or complex variations along the lines of hiding and seeking, try kick the can, hit the dirt, capture the flag, or sardines.

What it is: A great outdoor running game, kind of a cross between hide and seek and tag. Can be played during the day, but also makes a great night game.

Best for: A big group of at least 12.

What you need: First, you’ll need somewhere outdoors to play, preferably with lots of trees or things to hide behind. The best place my siblings and cousins and I played was at our grandparents’ house, which had a huge front and back yard that were connected (no fences) so you could run all the way around. Yeah, a house to run around and hide behind makes a great game setup.

Then you’ll need one to six empty cans. We always used three or six of the metal soup can variety (rinsed and saved kindly by my grandma for whenever we’d visit). Just be careful you don’t cut yourself. In place of metal cans, you could use cardboard oatmeal containers or something similar. If you have just one can, it could be bigger, like a pail or a bucket. If you have more than one, be sure your items can stack (see above picture), and it’s more fun if they make noise when they bang around.

How to play: First, choose a jail in your playing area, or a place players will have to go when they’re tagged. The jail should be a central place from which a shout by a player can be heard all across the playing area. The jail should also have a flat surface, like concrete, on which to stack the cans.

Then choose someone to be It (we’ll say it’s Tony). Tony takes the cans and stacks them in the jail area. Then he closes his eyes and counts to a designated number, like 30, which can vary depending on the age of the players and the size of the playing area.

While Tony counts, all of the other players scatter across the playing area and find somewhere to hide. Players don’t have to stay put in their hiding places for the duration of the game.

Once Tony finishes counting, he opens his eyes and goes out to find people. The object of the game for Tony is to find and tag all of the players, sending them to jail. The players try to prevent him from doing so.

So Tony walks wherever he wants around the playing area, looking for players. If he sees someone, like Shelby, he chases after her so he can tag her. If Shelby is tagged, she walks to the jail and stays there, next to the cans.

The players who are hiding don’t have to stay in their hiding places; they can sneak around the playing area, trying to avoid being tagged. And trying to free other players from the jail.

Say Shelby and two other players are stuck in jail while Tony is going around looking for more people to tag. If Asher hasn’t been tagged or found by Tony yet and he sneaks safely to the jail without Tony seeing, he can free all of the players in the jail at once by kicking over the stack of cans and yelling as loud as he can, “Kick the can!” He should yell loud enough so Tony can hear.

As soon as Asher kicks the cans, he and the other players from jail scatter and hide again. Once Tony hears the yell and the cans being scattered, he has to go back to the jail and set up the cans (and, depending on how many players you have, how many cans you have, and how big your playing area is, maybe count to like 10 again) before he can go find people to tag.

If for some reason Tony doesn’t get around to setting up the cans right away, the jail can’t hold anyone; that is, if a player is tagged by Tony and heads to the jail but sees the cans already scattered, that player is automatically freed from jail.

If you’re playing with more than one can, it’s a good strategy to kick them as hard as you can so they scatter far; that way, it’s harder for Tony to set them up again. But no deliberately hiding the cans from Tony or carrying them far away; that’s cheating. Also, it’s okay if someone kicks the cans in plain sight of Tony, as long as Tony doesn’t tag him or her first.

Variations: I think we almost always played with two people being It, just so it was a little more fairly matched.

Best for: A group of about 10.

What you need: You’ll need paper and pens for everyone to write with. The paper doesn’t need to be big; in fact, index cards would be perfect.

How to play: To start, pass around pens and cards to everyone in the circle. This is a great, easy game for groups because you don’t need a certain number of players and no one has to sit out; everyone can play right away. Once everyone has a card and pen, tell everyone to write a question that begins with “What if…” at the top of the card. For example, “What if people had platypuses for pets instead of dogs?”

These questions can be as serious or as silly as you want them to be. In our games, they usually end up both ridiculously silly and about people in the room, like “What if Joe wore only corduroy clothing all the time?” At any rate, don’t be afraid to let your creativity show!

Then collect all of the cards, shuffle them up, and deal them back out to everyone randomly. If someone gets their own card by chance, you can let them switch for another one.

Once everyone has a card with a question that they didn’t write, tell everyone to then write an answer to the question, starting with the word “Then…” Again, these can be as silly or as serious as you want. If you got the question “What if we all had platypuses for pets instead of dogs?” you might write: “Then we’d all have to live next to rivers and streams.” Or you might write “Then Lassie would have turned out a whole lot differently.” The point of the game is to be kind of silly, so don’t be afraid to. Also don’t worry if you think you’re not terribly witty (as I always do in games like this), because it really won’t matter in the end. You’ll still be funny even if you’re not witty. I love games like that.

Then for the last part of the game, everyone goes around the circle and reads their cards, but here’s the catch: you’ll answer each question with a mis-matched answer. So here’s how it works. Say Mike’s playing and he was holding the platypus question. He’d read the question out loud: “What if we all had platypuses for pets instead of dogs?” But then the person to the right of Mike, we’ll call her Kim, would read her answer for her question, which might be: “Then the world would be a much better place.” Then Kim would read the question on the card she’s holding, “What if there were a Chick-fil-A on every corner?” and the next person in the circle would respond with their answer to their question. You’d go all around the circle until you got back to Mike’s answer: “Then Lassie would have turned out a whole lot differently.”

Usually hearing a question with the wrong answer is pretty funny, either because it makes absolutely no sense or it’s surprisingly true. So as you go around the circle, you’ll all probably laugh and joke (especially if  some of the questions are about people in the room) and claim the questions. A lot of silliness, but a lot of fun, too. Then if you like it, play another round!

Variations: This game reminds me a lot of paper telephone, probably because both games invariably tend to be about people in the room in ridiculous situations. So silly. But so fun.

Best for: A group of 3 to 6.

What you need: First, you need a metal muffin tin. If you have an old one that you wouldn’t mind sacrificing, that would be best. (If not, that’s okay, too.) Then you’ll need a bag of marshmallows, not the mini kind. It’s also helpful to have some way of marking a boundary on the floor (masking tape works well) and a way to keep score (like pen and paper). Finally, if you have some sticky labels, like the small neon circle kinds, and a black Sharpie, you’ll be set.

How to play: The game is really simple: players take turns tossing marshmallows towards the muffin tin, scoring points based on where the marshmallow lands.

To set up the game, you’ll want to assign a point value to each row or each hole in your muffin tin. That might look like this:

 Or like this:

Whatever you want. You can use the sticky labels to assign the point values or, if you don’t want to put stickers on your muffin tin, just write down or remember which points correspond to each row (shoot, you could print out one of those pictures right above) or just make sure the stickers will come off.

Then set the muffin tin up, either flat on the floor or propped up slightly on a book or something, and mark a line on the floor a few feet away. The distance of the line will depend on the age/skill of your players. In my family, where players ranged from my parents to my youngest sister not yet in Kindergarten, we had a few lines for varying ages.

Then to play, just have your players take turns tossing the marshmallow towards the muffin tin. If a marshmallow lands in a hole and stays there, that player gets that number of points. Each player might get three marshmallow tosses, and you can cycle through your players as many times as you want. The player with the most points in the end wins and gets to eat all the remaining marshmallows, mua ha ha! Or, just…win. Either way.

Variations: It’s a really simple game, but you could add some of your own rules if you wanted to make it more exciting. For example, you could give some of the muffin holes negative point values for added variability.

Best for: Smaller groups, maybe 3 to 6 people.

What you need: Nothing! But a word list might be helpful.

How to play: This game is really simple, and you could make up more complicated rules if you wanted to. But basically someone says a word, any word, and another player has to respond immediately with the very first word that pops into his or her head (no thinking allowed). So a sample game between Mack and Jane might go like this:

MACK: Apples.

JANE: Caramel.

MACK: Christmas.

JANE: Lights.

M: Spider.

J: Eww.

M: Groundhog.

J: Bill Murray.

M: Slow.

J: Snail.

It’s supposed to be very fast, with only a fraction of a second between Mack’s prompt and Jane’s response. It’s best if Mack responds quickly, too; that gets Jane in the habit of responding quickly. The fun of the game comes in learning possibly interesting things about your friends or family (“Crush.” “Andrew–I mean,…uh…” “What?!”), or in laughing at the interesting, creative, or (il)logical associations our minds come up with. Your game might be interrupted with questions, explanations, or laughter, and that’s all part of the fun.

To help in thinking up quick prompts, feel free to use my online word generator.

What it is: An outdoor group game, not terribly active, but it does involve kicking/catching/pegging (traditionally with a hacky sack).

Best for: Group of about 6 to 8.

What you need: A ball to play with, usually a hacky sack. You could also try with a bigger ball, like a soccer ball. Or for a really easy game with smaller kids, use one of those kickball-sized lightweight rubber balls filled with air, like the ones you see at Walmart in those big nets, you know?

How to play: First everyone stands in a circle. One player, like Cole, starts by holding the hacky sack and then volleys it to another player, like Sarah. Then Sarah passes it to someone else in the circle, using her feet, knees, or head, but no hands. (Or, go ahead and allow hands if you want. No one’s going to stop you.) As Sarah passes the hacky, everyone counts “one” out loud. Then as the hacky is passed again, everyone counts “two” out loud. After the hacky is passed a third time and everyone counts “three” out loud, anyone is allowed to catch the hacky with their hands. Say Cole happened to catch it again.

Now Cole gets a chance to try to peg another player and eliminate them. He can’t move his feet at all, but everyone else is allowed to take exactly five steps away from him. After they do, he looks around and carefully chooses someone to peg, like Sarah. If he’s successful in pegging her (from the neck down), Sarah is out. If Sarah catches the hackey in her hands, Cole is out. If Cole misses, nothing happens. Then start the three volleys again. Continue playing until one player remains, the winner.

Variations: I think this game is also called wacky sack (haha). And you could easily adapt or modify the rules for the size of the group or the skill of your players. You could have more than three volleys, for example, before someone is allowed to catch the hacky. You could have players take three steps away from the pegger instead of five. You could make a rule that if someone tries to peg someone but misses entirely, they’re eliminated. Or if a player is pegged, instead of being eliminated right away, you could give them a letter and then once a predetermined word is spelled, like spaz, for example, they’d be out of the game. Anyway, just experiment with the rules if you want to and find something that works for you.

Also, the game spud is a little similar and a little more active (and, personally, I think that one’s a little more fun).

What it is: This clapping routine game is set of hand routines involving snaps, claps, and slaps. You learn the routine, then the fun consists of doing it over and over, getting faster and faster. I learned and played the game at a summer camp for teenage girls. It was our favorite game to play in the mess hall while we waited for our food because it makes a lot of noise.

Best for: However many people you want. You could even play by yourself (but I’m not promising that would be as fun as playing with friends).

What you need: Preferably, a table. But if you don’t have a table or flat surface, your lap will do.

How to play: This is one of those games that would be really hard to teach in writing. So my sisters helped me make this short video that teaches you how to play.

You just have to memorize the clapping routines (it’s not that hard once you start), and then you can do them as fast as you can.

Variations: You can play either competitively or non-competitively. To play competitively, make it a game of elimination. Start by doing all six routines slowly, then do them again a little faster, then a little faster. Anyone who messes up at any point is out of the game. (You might need a judge to help decide this.) Or, don’t eliminate anyone and just play for fun, teaching any new friends who walk up to your table and wonder what in the world you’re doing.

Also, for a very similar game, check out the cup game.

What it is: A good indoor group game for all ages; it can easily be used as a get-to-know-you game, too.

Best for: A group of about 10 to 20.

What you need: Somewhere to play with enough seats for everyone, arranged in a more or less a circle. Also a rolled-up newspaper. (This will be used to lightly whack each other with and could easily be substituted with something else: a foam baseball bat, the cardboard middle of a roll of paper towels, etc.)

How to play: Let’s say you’re playing as a get-to-know-you game. First, have everyone sit in a circle. Then, since your players don’t all know each other, go around the room and have everyone say his or her name a few times, so everyone can start to learn names. If you have two people with the same first name, learn their first name and last initial.

Next, choose one player to be It (we’ll call him David). David holds the rolled-up newspaper and stands in the middle of the circle. David’s goal is to whack one of the other players with the newspaper, which will let him trade spots and sit down while someone else becomes It. But David can only hit certain players at certain times.

To start the game, choose one player, like Katie, to begin. She starts by saying the name of someone else sitting in the circle, like Greg. As soon as she says Greg’s name, David can hit Greg with the newspaper. But as soon as Greg says another name, like Violet, David has to target Violet instead. If David whacks Violet with the newspaper after her name is said but before she can say a new name, she’s It and David gets to sit down.

It’s a good get-to-know-you game for David because he has to remember everyone’s names so he knows who to tag. And it’s a good get-to-know-you game for everyone else because they have to remember each other’s names so they can call them out.

Variations: If you’re playing with a group of people and you all know each other, using your first names might be too easy. So make the game more fun by assigning everyone a state, or a fruit, or something else in a category of your choosing. Now everyone has to remember each other’s assigned names, making the game more challenging and fun.

You could make the game even more challenging by tying the name to the chair, instead of the person. So if David was it but tagged Greg and then sat down in Greg’s seat, David would assume Greg’s name until he moved to a different chair. Make sense? That might get confusing, but it could be a fun way to make the game more challenging.

This game is also a variation on the theme of signs, just not as quiet as signs.

What it is: A simple clapping routine that’s fun to do with a big group of people. You learn the routine and try to do it as fast as you can. I’ve played during summer camps in cafeterias at meal times. It makes a lot of noise, and it’s fun to do with a lot of people.

Best for: A big group of at least 10 people (but you can play with less).

What you need: You need a table to sit at and enough people to sit all around the table. Then everyone who’s playing needs a cup. It’s best if all the cups are identical. They should be small enough that they’re easy to grab. Plastic Dixie cups work okay, but sometimes they’re too lightweight. Ideally, you’d have a bunch of plastic restaurant tumblers, like the kind you get at one of those all-you-can-eat pizza buffets (CiCi’s, anyone?).

How to play: To get ready, have everyone sit around a table. The bigger the table and the more people you have, the more fun it is. And to work right, everyone needs to be sitting next to each other; no empty spaces. Then everyone gets a cup and turns it upside on the table right in front of them.

Now the best way to teach this game is with a video, so three of my sisters helped me make one. Just watch!

So when you really play, you’ll be sitting in a circle and be able to pass the cups all around, making the game a loop that goes on and on. You gradually get faster and faster, until no one can keep up and everyone laughs.

Variations: You could play more competitively and eliminate anyone who messes up, making the circle smaller and smaller, but for that you’d need to modify the group size around the table. The real fun is just in trying to go as fast as you can as a group. And in making a lot of noise.

Best for: About 4 to 8 players.

What you need: Just a swimming pool, one that you can easily swim across in one direction or another.

How to play: First, choose one player to be It – say it’s Roger. Roger gets out of the pool and stands on the edge, with his back facing the pool. All of the other players line up inside the water, holding onto the edge of the pool beneath Roger, like this:

Now Roger thinks of a category. It could really be anything, but some common categories include fruits, breakfast cereals, candy bars, car types, etc. It should be something that all players will know fairly well.

Roger announces his category out loud, and then all of the other players silently think of an object in that category. So if Roger’s category is breakfast cereals, Beth might choose Cap’n Crunch, and Sam might choose Rice Krispies Treat cereal.

Once all the players have their objects in their heads, they announce they’re ready and Roger can begin. He starts calling out breakfast cereals out loud. All of the other players wait until Roger calls out the breakfast cereal that they’ve chosen. Say Roger calls out Cap’n Crunch, Beth’s cereal. That’s her cue to begin swimming to the opposite end of the pool, away from Roger. Her goal is to make it to the opposite end without being tagged, and Roger’s goal is to tag her before she does. If he does tag her, she’s the new It. If he doesn’t, Beth gets to stay where she is and Roger gets out and continues to name items in the category.

So, because Roger’s back is turned, he won’t know to turn around unless Beth makes some noise. Being perfectly silent as you swim across a pool can be hard, but still, that’s her goal. (The best is if you can take one big breath, dip quietly under the water, and shoot across the whole pool without coming up for air.) If Roger ever hears a splash or a noise, he can turn around and check if anyone’s swimming across the pool. If anyone has left the wall, he can jump in to tag them. But if Roger turns around too often without cause, the other players can call him out on it.

Sometimes you might choose speed over silence: if you think you can get away from Roger quickly enough, forget being quiet and just go for it. Or, you might choose silence over speed, and ever-so-slowly work your way along the edge of the pool, hoping you can get far enough away without being heard.

Finally, more than one person might have chosen the same object in the category, but that’s okay; they’ll all just swim across at the same time.

The round ends either when Roger tags someone (then that person becomes It) or when all of the players make it to the other side of the pool untagged (then Roger loses and plays another round as It). For the next round, choose a new category and play again!

Variations: If you’re playing with young kids, you could play in the shallow end only, swimming (or walking) across the short end of the pool. Just be careful jumping in!

Best for: Group of 3 to 8ish.

What you need: Nothing!

How to play: Have all your players sit in a circle, or establish a clear playing order. Then proceed to tell a story, with each person saying one sentence at a time. Here’s the catch: each sentence must start with either “fortunately” or “unfortunately,” always alternating. So here’s how a sample game might go. The first player, Rachel, starts out the story by saying a simple statement of fact, like

One day I got a new puppy.

(The story can be in first person, but it doesn’t have to be.) The next player, Brad, would then add a sentence onto the story, but he has to start the sentence with “unfortunately,” like

Unfortunately, he ran away.

Then it’s Katie’s turn, but she has to start a sentence with “fortunately:”

Fortunately, he came back the next day with a 100 dollar bill.

The next player would say an “unfortunately” sentence, like “Unfortunately, the 100 dollar bill was a counterfeit and the cops nabbed me for it when I tried to use it to buy a pet canary.” As you can imagine, the game usually gets pretty silly pretty fast. And the stories tend to drag on without any clear ending, so just break it up when you want to start a new one. It’s a lot of fun, though, and good for car rides or killing time. Write your stories down or just tell them out loud; either way, have fun!

Variations: As said, this game is pretty similar to tell a story.

Example: If you want an example game, maybe you could watch the TV show I Shouldn’t Be Alive; sometimes I think those episodes tend to play out like a version of this game. (The man was starving in the jungle…fortunately, he found some berries…unfortunately, they were poisionous. But fortunately, he hunted a rabbit to eat…but unfortunately, he had no fire to cook it…)

Okay, for real, here’s a sample game from me and my husband. Oh, which reminds me of something else: if you’re playing with only two people (or any even number), it means the same people will always be saying “unfortunately” or “fortunately” sentences. Which could be boring or could be fun. But you could just switch it up halfway through if you want. For now, you can guess who had the “fortunately” sentences in this example, me or my husband:

One day a man was flying on an airplane. Unfortunately, the airplane was out of peanuts. Fortunately, the man was allergic to peanuts and so he was happy about that. Unfortunately, the man was also allergic to chocolate chip cookies, and the airplane wasn’t out of those. Fortunately, the man was the pilot, and so he wasn’t offered any of the cookies. Unfortunately, the pilot was so distracted by the conversation about the cookies he was allergic to that he didn’t see the huge thundercloud. Fortunately, the plane’s autopilot took control and did a barrel roll around the thundercloud. Unfortunately…

Well, you get the idea.

Best for: A big group of at least 10 players.

What you need: Slips of paper and pens to write with. And also a hat or bowl to put all the slips of paper in. And a timer.

How to play: First, write down names of people or characters on the slips of paper. You could prepare this ahead of time on your own (or print off mine!). Or, hand out a slip of paper to every person in the room and have everyone write down the name of someone famous (a person, alive or dead, or a character). You don’t have to have the same number of papers as players; that’s just a convenient way to set up the game. The more names you have written, the longer your game will be.

Once you have all your names written down, fold each one up and put them in the hat or bowl. Then divide your players into two teams (drawing a line down the center of the room is an easy way). Now you’re ready to play.

The game consists of team members guessing the names on the slips of paper throughout three rounds. The team who guesses the most names after the three rounds wins. Here’s how it works.

The first round is just like catchphrase. Team 1 sends up a player (say Jake) up to the front. Jake stands at the ready, and the designated timer person starts the time. (You can choose a time that works best for you, but about 30 seconds usually works well.) As soon as the time starts, Jake draws a name from the hat and starts getting his teammates to guess. Just like catchphrase, Jake can talk and say anything except the celebrity’s name, or any part of it.

So, if Jake drew the name Billy the Kid, he might say, “A famous outlaw from the American Old West!” but he couldn’t say, “An outlaw who was referred to as a kid!” because kid is written on the paper.

As soon as Jake’s teammates say “Billy the Kid!” Jake gets to draw another slip of paper. He goes through as many names as he can until the time runs out (no skipping allowed). Then save all of Team 1’s correct slips in a pile until the end of the round.

Next team 2 gets a turn, and you keep rotating teams and players until all the slips of paper have been guessed correctly. Have each team count up the correct names in their piles and write down each team’s total somewhere. Next, put all the slips of paper back in the hat. Then round 2 starts.

Round 2 is just like charades. Just like in round 1, players come to the front, draw slips of paper, and try to get their teammates to guess as many names as they can before the time runs out, but this time players are not allowed to talk, only act. So if Carlos drew Billy the Kid this time, he could pretend to draw a gun out of his holster to get his teammates to guess the name.

Round 2 should be somewhat easier because everyone’s heard the names once before. Just like in round 1, have each team save up their correct guesses and count up the total at the end. Then, put all the papers back in the hat for the third and final round.

Round 3 is similar to round 1. Players get their teammates to guess names by talking—but this time, players are only allowed one word. So if Jake happened to draw Billy the Kid again, he might say “Outlaw!” and wait for his team to guess the right name. Guessers have the advantage this round of having heard each name twice before, so memory comes to play as much of a role as guessing does. If Jake’s one word just doesn’t cut it and his team doesn’t guess it right away, they’re forced to keep guessing and thinking until the time runs out. Speed is still important, because Jake wants to get through as many names as possible before the time runs out. (You might find that a shorter time, like 10 seconds, works better for round 3.)

At the end of the round, count up each team’s names one more time, and then add each team’s totals from rounds 1, 2, and 3. The team with the most correct guesses overall wins.

Variations: You don’t have to play with people’s names. The game could also work well with movie titles, books, etc. Or you could easily put a themed spin on the game (historical celebrities, for example). I’ve also made a Thanksgiving version.

Printables: If you want a list of famous people and characters ready to go, just print out mine! Click the link below, print, and cut along the lines. And for more printable lists of people and also movie titles, check out the pictionary post. Enjoy!

List of famous people and characters

Best for: A group of about 6 to 12 people.

What you need: Nothing!

How to play: The basic game play consists of players telling three facts about themselves. Two of the facts must be true, but the third one should be a lie. Then the other players have to guess which one is the lie.

So here’s how you could set up the game. Have all of your players sit in a circle and choose someone to start, say Mark. Mark would then think of two true facts about himself and one lie, then say them aloud in any order, trying to conceal the lie as a truth. For example, Mark might say, “I can finish a whole large pizza in one sitting…

“…I’ve had my picture in the newspaper…”

“…and I’ve been skydiving.”

Then the rest of the players would be able to think, consult, and decide together which fact about Mark is false. If you want an easy, no-score game, just have the players discuss and guess, and then have Mark reveal the lie. If you really want to keep score, you could let all of the players guess individually. Whoever is right gets a point; whoever is wrong doesn’t. You could also give Mark a point for every person he fooled. Whether you’re keeping score or not, after Mark reveals the lie, then the next player in the circle takes a turn.

Strategies: When you’re giving your three facts, since you’re trying to fool the other players, it’s good to disguise the lie as a truth; that is, something that people would believe you’ve done. Alternatively, you could try to disguise your truths as lies (so say things you’ve done that are kind of unbelievable, kind of like Mark did). Also, I’ve seen people play where they name very common things as their truths and lie, making it pretty difficult to guess. But either way, you’re trying to say things about yourself that others don’t know, making this a good get-to-know-you game.

Variations: If you wanted, instead of having players reveal their lie right away, you could have everyone in the circle say their truths and lie, and then go back around the circle a second time and let people reveal what was true and false.

Best for: A group of about 8 to 10 people (though you can play with many more).

What you need: Words to act out (check out my word generator for an electronic list, or the end of this post for word lists you can print out). Optional: A timer or stopwatch and paper to keep score on.

How to play: The object of the game is simple: players take turns acting out words, with no talking or sound effects. Other players try to guess the word, and the team or player who guesses the most wins.

For example, if you’re playing with a big group of people, you could have two teams. Team 1 sends up their first player, Tucker, to act out a word. Say Tucker draws a slip of paper with the word astronaut written on it.

Tucker would then have to act out the word as fast as possible in a way that his teammates could guess. He might take slow, exaggerated steps, as if he were walking on the moon, then pretend to put up a flag and salute to it. Anything to get his teammates to shout out the word astronaut. As Tucker is acting, his teammates start shouting out guesses. Tucker can modify his actions based on the feedback of his team, but the one thing he can’t do is talk or make any noise.

(Another possible rule: It’s debatable whether Tucker can point to things, like the framed picture of Neil Armstrong his uncle has on the wall. This was often against the rules when we played, but you can decide what’s best for your game.)

After Tucker finishes acting out his word, he sits down and a player from Team 2 gets a turn.

That’s how the game play works, but you can set up the actual game however you want. You could have two teams or more, or no teams at all. You could keep score or just play for fun. You can have a timer and set a time limit on each player’s turn; as many words as they can act out and get their team to guess, they get points for, but once the timer runs out, their turn is over.

You can also easily make this a themed game. Just use words related to Halloween for your classroom Halloween party, or summer words for your end-of-the-year summer bash, or a list of your niece’s favorite things for her seven-year-old birthday party.

Variations: There are lots of other variations on this simple acting and guessing game. You can try telephone charades, celebrities, in the manner of the adverb, and even Star Wars pictionades (a game of my own invention).

Printables: Need a printable charades word list ready to go? Here you go! Click the links below to open the word lists, then just print them and cut along the lines for paper strips of words ready for acting. Have fun!

Charades Word List – Easy Words

Charades Word List – Medium Words

Charades Word List – Hard Words

Charades Word List – Really Hard Words

What it is: I know there are a lot of games called chicken, but this one is the one we always played in the pool growing up. It’s a fun and rough (and therefore slightly dangerous) pool game.

Best for: 4 to about 8 players.

What you need: Just a pool and some people to play. It’s best if you have people of varying sizes/ages.

How to play: The game is played in the shallow end of the pool with at least four players (but up to, oh, like eight or ten, if you wanted). Players form pairs and try to eliminate the other pairs from the game.

In this game, let’s say there are four players: Jim and his younger sister Susie and their cousins Leo and Travis. Jim and Susie are one pair. To get ready to play, one of them (probably Susie, assuming she’s smaller) will sit on the other’s shoulders. Jim would stay standing in the shallow end. Leo (say he’s smaller) would also get on Travis’s shoulders, like this:

Then someone yells “go!” and the game begins. The point is for each pair to knock the top player off of the other pair. This is done primarily by Susie and Leo grabbing, pushing, shoving, and pulling each other (but no hitting, kicking, or biting). Travis and Jim also play strategic roles in maneuvering around each other and could even try to trip each other if they were really aggressive.

As you can imagine, it’s a pretty rough game. (We played with my cousins a lot, and I don’t think our parents ever liked it, but we played anyway.) It’s kind of one of those anything-goes games. And I guess not much of a game for strategy…the biggest or toughest players usually win. But it’s fun because different combinations of pairs can lead to different outcomes (for example, say Travis is really strong, but Leo’s kind of a wuss, or the other way around.)

The game is over when one of the top players falls off their partner’s shoulders and into the water. (It’s debatable whether a team getting dunked, even if the top player stays on top of the bottom player’s shoulders, counts as losing or not.) We also had some pretty fun ongoing games with lots of pairs (where anyone could attack anyone else), and then if you fell down you got right back up again and jumped back into the fray.

Disclaimer: Though I’ve never personally known anyone to become injured in a game of chicken, please be careful when you play. Letting especially big or aggressive kids play with smaller kids might be dangerous…so make sure everyone is safe, aware, and kind.

Best for: Big group of at least 10 players.

What you need: You’ll need two flags. And you’ll need somewhere to play. While a forested area or park is often fun for regular capture the flag, flour bomb capture the flag works best in a flat, open area, like a big parking lot or a field or yard. Oh, and it’s also best when played during the daylight.

Then you need people to play, preferably all wearing dark-colored clothing. You could have one team in black shirts and one team in navy blue shirts, for instance. But the different colored t-shirts aren’t necessary. White t-shirts, however, make this game not nearly as fun.

Finally, you’ll need flour bombs. You’re going to want at least as many flour bombs as you have players, but it would be better to have double that, maybe more.

So, what’s a flour bomb? It’s just a handful of flour packed inside a tied-off portion of panty hose.

When you throw the flour bomb at someone, it leaves a white mark on their shirt. Think of it as a painless, easy, kid-friendly version of paintballs.

To make your flour bombs, gather up as many old pairs of panty hose as you can find, or purchase some cheap ones. Cut each leg into, oh, three or four pieces. Then make sure that each piece is closed at one end (the toe pieces will already be like this; for the middle pieces of the leg, just tie a knot in one end). Then carefully put about a cup of flour into each portion of panty hose and tie off the other end. Try to make your bombs as packed as possible, not too floppy. And voila! You have flour bombs. They’re pretty messy to assemble and store, so don’t try to make them in your living room. And it’s nice to store them in a big bucket.

How to play: Game play is the same as regular capture the flag, with one difference: instead of tagging other players, you peg them with flour bombs. To start, at the beginning of the game, put all of the flour bombs on the dividing line between the two teams. Have players line up on their side equal distances from the dividing line. When someone yells “go,” all players can make a run for the flour bombs and grab as many as they can. Then hang onto your flour bombs until you want to use them to peg someone. When you’re out of flour bombs, pick up more from the ground.

You can’t peg members from the opposing team while they’re on their side, of course. And you can’t be pegged while you’re on your side. The white marks left by the flour bombs will help settle disputes as to whether someone was pegged or not (which is why white t-shirts are just no fun). Also, if you’re wearing dark shirts, you can all line up at the end of the game and see who got pegged the worst.

You might want to outlaw gathering and hoarding flour bombs, too (or maybe that’s fair game in your game; you decide). And one important rule: No pegging players’ faces or heads. Though when we played, the end of the game often turned into simply a free-for-all peg-each-other-with-flour-bombs activity, which inevitably turned into a free-for-all open-the-flour-bombs-and-dump-them-in-each-other’s-hair flour fight. Ah, good times. This was an annual tradition for my youth group at church. Lots of fun.

Variations: Ooh, I’ve never played this way and I’m not quite sure how it would work, but wouldn’t it be kind of fun to somehow add colored chalk to your flour so each team could have their own colored bombs? That way might even be fun with more than two teams (and definitely white t-shirts). There are also other variations of regular capture the flag, like playing at night with glow sticks.

What it is: A fun variation of tag that gives players more of a chance to rest between runs. The game is played using pairs, which is why we always called it missionary tag (missionaries often preach in pairs).

Best for: An even number of players in a big group (like at least 10).

What you need: Just a big, open space outdoors to play. An open grassy area is best.

How to play: First, have all your players find a partner in order to form pairs. (The pairs will switch up a lot as the game goes on, if that makes it less stressful for any of those who are afraid of commitment.)

Let’s say Rick and Tammy form a pair. Next instruct all your pairs to stand side-by-side, linking arms as shown.

Rick and Tammy are ready to go.

You should be playing with an even number of people, so everyone should have a partner. Each pair should stand spaced out from the other pairs in a circle, or just kind of a spaced-out jumble works, too.

After all your pairs are set, choose one pair to be It and the first person that It chases. We’ll say that T.J. starts out as It, and Jenny starts out as the person T.J. chases.

T.J. gives Jenny a few seconds’ lead, during which Jenny takes off running from T.J. Soon T.J. follows. If he tags Jenny, she becomes It and immediately starts chasing T.J.

But Jenny can escape from T.J. by running up to any pair in the game and linking arms with one of the partners. For example, say she runs up to Rick and Tammy and links arms with Rick’s free arm. As soon as Jenny hooks arms with Rick, that means the third player – Tammy – is T.J.’s new target to tag. So Tammy better run away ASAP, or T.J. will tag her and she’ll become It.

Any player being chased by the person who’s It can hook on to any pair at any time. The only rule: you can’t hook on to a pair right next to the pair you just left. It’s a lot of fun and a game you can play for a lot longer than normal tag since you get a chance to rest. Enjoy!

Variations: If you’re playing with a really big group, you might want to try having more than one person being It and more than one person being chased at one time. It adds to the excitement of the game and keeps things moving at a faster pace.

What it is: A funny variation of telephone, played on paper instead of out loud. It’s a great game for creative teens or adults and can be quite entertaining. It’s always been a favorite among my family and friends.

Best for: Group of about 6 to 10.

What you need: Each player will need a piece of paper and a pencil or pen to write/draw with.

How to play: First set up the game by sitting all of your players in a circle indoors. This game might be hard to play around a table because each player needs to keep their paper secret from their neighbors, so playing in a living room on couches and chairs works great.

Then hand out paper and writing utensils to all the players. Have everyone write his or her name in small print at the bottom right of the page.

Everyone starts by writing a sentence at the top of his or her paper. It can be something random, true, abstract, from a song lyric, or about someone in the room. Here are some examples:

• The kids all danced around the large oak tree.
• The dog chased the carefree butterflies to the end of the rainbow.
• If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a world it would be!
• Ted can’t find the right shoes to wear to prom.

Once everyone has a sentence at the top of his or her paper, everyone passes their paper to the player to their right.

Then everyone illustrates the sentence give to them with a small picture right underneath the sentence. So, for example, if Mary were given the sentence “The kids all danced around the large oak tree,” she might draw something like this:

Once everyone has finished drawing their sentences, everyone folds the top part of the paper over so it covers the first sentence, but not the picture. Then again, everyone passes their papers to the right.

Now everyone receives a paper with just a drawing visible, and everyone writes the sentence that presumably could have led to that picture (usually with some humor thrown in). For example, Bob, given the above picture, might write this sentence underneath: “Once there was a family of tree huggers.” Then everyone folds over their paper so only the last sentence is visible and passes the paper to the right.

And that’s basically how the game works. Everyone continues alternately writing sentences and drawing pictures, always covering up everything but the latest sentence or picture and passing to the right. Continue writing and drawing until you run out of room, or until everyone gets his or her paper back (that’s why you wrote names at the bottom at the beginning).

After everyone’s done writing and drawing, everyone unfolds the paper he or she has and begins to read and laugh at all the sentences and drawings, especially how in the world the first sentence turned into the last one. Then you can go around the circle one by one as everyone reads a paper out loud, or you can just pass them around so everyone can see the drawings clearly.

And then play another round!

Strategies: Really, the point of the game is to evoke laughter, so good strategies include being creative and off-the-wall with your sentences and pictures. Oh, and don’t worry, no artistic talent is required. It’s always kind of funny (or against the rules, depending on your viewpoint) when someone writes a sentence about a picture and throws in something that wasn’t there before, just to heighten the random factor. And when we play, most papers inevitably end up about people in the room, even if they don’t start out that way.

Example game

This game might be hard to visualize if you’ve never played it before, so here’s an example from a real-live game, to show you how one sentence can turn into a picture that can turn into a totally new sentence and on and on:

The kids all danced around the large oak tree.

Once there was a family of tree huggers.

After watching Fern Gully, Mrs. Mullen’s fourth grade class hurried out to the playground for a live reenactment.

The boys saw a picture of a girl and ran frantically to the park.

Many thanks to my sister and cousins for letting me use their artwork.

You can see some other game samples here.

What it is: A talking, guessing game, similar to green glass doors, but players think of their own rules rather than following the secret green glass door rule.

Best for: 2 to 8 players.

What you need: Nothing!

How to play: Similar to green glass doors, players try to discover what can be taken on a hypothetical picnic. One player starts by thinking of a rule for things that can go on the picnic; the other players try to guess the rule.

Say Julie and Todd are playing. Julie starts by thinking of a rule of things that can and can’t go on the picnic. The rule can be as complex or as simple as she likes. It can have to do with any attribute (color, shape, size, even the number of letters used to spell the name of the object). Here are some example rules Julie could choose:

• Only yellow things can go on the picnic (bananas, the sun, dandelions, etc.).
• Only things you can eat can go on the picnic (apples, oranges, pancakes).
• Only things bigger than a person can go on the picnic (elephants, houses, the moon).
• Only things that are spelled with five letters can go on the picnic (apple, grass, honey).

The rules could be even more complicated and relate to the person trying to go on the picnic, like these rules:

• I can only bring items on the picnic that start with the same letter as my first name (so Julie could bring jam to the picnic, but Todd couldn’t, though he could bring a truck).
• I can only bring items on the picnic that start with the same letter as the first name of the person sitting to my right (yeah, that one can get really complicated to figure out).

The player thinking of the rule can use his or her imagination and come up with something as complicated or as sneaky as they want; the point of the game is to keep the other players from guessing the rule.

Let’s say Julie picks the rule that only yellow things can go on the picnic. Once she has the rule, she starts the game by declaring something she’s bringing on the picnic. For example, she’d say:

“I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing bananas, and I can go.”

Then it’s Todd’s turn to guess something that he can bring on the picnic. He might say, “I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing apples?” Then Julie would shake her head sadly and say, “You can’t go.”

Play would continue, with Julie and Todd taking turns. Julie would usually say things that she could bring to the picnic, but she could give Todd some examples of things she can’t bring, too. Todd keeps guessing until he’s figured out the rule. Then it can be Todd’s turn to think of a new rule for Julie to guess.

It’s a great, entertaining game for long car trips or killing time. Since the rule changes with each round, it doesn’t get boring easily. And the level of difficulty can be easily adapted—just choose easier rules for younger kids and harder rules for older kids.

Variations: This game is a more adaptable variation of green glass doors.

What you need: Words to guess (either written down on strips of paper, or perhaps generated by a handy online word generator someone made) and a timer.

How to play: The point of the game is to get your team members to guess the target word by explaining the word to them out loud. The trick is, you can’t say the word (or any variant of the word) or you lose the round.

So to start, prepare a bunch of words or phrases on slips of paper (see below for some pre-made printable word lists, or use my online word generator). You could divide these into categories (famous people, foods, sports, household items, animals) or just mix them all together.

Put your papers into a bowl or hat and then situate all your players. Divide everyone up into two teams and have everyone sit in a circle, alternating members from each team (if you can find a way to divide teams like boys versus girls, then it’s good because it’s very easy to remember who’s on your team).

Choose one player, like Marty, to start. Marty takes the bowl of words, draws one, and immediately starts to describe it while at the same time someone starts the timer (for as much time as you all choose). As soon as Marty starts describing, his team members can start shouting out guesses (while the opposing team stays silent/watches the timer). Marty can say anything as long as it’s not the word written on the paper or any variant of the word. (The opposing team members sitting next to Marty can look over his shoulder and make sure he doesn’t say any words he’s not allowed to.)

Say Marty’s first word is baseball bat.

He could say:

“A long wooden thing you use to play a sport!”

However, he could not say:

“A long wooden thing you use to play baseball!”

Or even:

“A long wooden thing you use to hit a ball!”

Because he can’t say any variant of anything written on the slip of paper. Marty could get creative, though, and say something like:

“The mammal that has wings and is black and flies around at night eating insects!”

And when his team members shout, “bat!” he could say:

“Okay, that same word, but used to describe something long and wooden you use in a sport!”

As Marty’s team members guess, he can provide feedback and keep talking, as long as he doesn’t say any word on the paper.

Speed is definitely the key, because Marty’s goal is to get through as many words as he can before the timer runs out. Each word his team guesses correctly gets them a point. When the timer runs out, pass the bowl to the next person in the circle, and they get a turn to draw words and describe them while their team guesses. Play moves like this around the circle, with lots of describing and shouting out answers involved. It’s a lot of fun.

The team with the most points in the end wins. You can have players just save their papers until the end to count points, or have someone write down the score after each round, for those players who like to know they’re winning (or not).

Rules: Rhyming words are not allowed as clues. So, for example, if the word were plum and someone tried to use the word chum to get a teammate to guess it, that would be against the rules, because plum and chum have no clear relation except for the fact that they rhyme. The same goes for using clue words simply because they have the same first letter as the word. (So if the word were plum, saying, “Princess! Poultry! Pumpkin!” and accentuating the “p” sound would be against the rules.)

Strategies: Since speed is so important in this game, the faster you can give hints that will help your team members guess, the better. Well-known phrases or song lyrics are great, for instance. For example, if the word were snowman, instead of saying: “Something kids build in the winter that’s in the shape of a human…” you could just shout: “Frosty the…” and everyone would (hopefully) immediately shout “Snowman!”

Variations: You can choose to allow or prohibit skipping words (say if you draw one that’s just way too hard to describe or a word you don’t know the definition of). If you’re playing with younger players, maybe allowing passing is a good idea. But if you’re hardcore, maybe it’s not.

Also, you could play with a shorter time limit (maybe 10 seconds or so) and let each player describe only one word per turn. If they guess it, great; the turn ends, the team gets a point, and it’s the next player’s turn. If they don’t, too bad; no points for them that round. Just experiment to find out the best time limit for your group.

One fun rule to make it more challenging is to try to get people to guess the word by saying as few words as possible, like one or two. You could get more points the fewer words you used, if you really wanted to keep score.

Oh, and once I was playing catchphrase with my family and it was getting a little easy, so my sister suggested that each person had to use a random pre-selected word in each clue. The word we chose was “banana.” So, for example, if the word was baseball bat, we’d say something like, “This is kind of shaped like a banana in that it’s long and skinny…” Or if the word were tiptoe, we’d say something like “If you’re in a room with a lot of banana peels all over the floor, you might walk like this.” It was a kind of fun way to keep the game interesting, creative, challenging, and a little silly.

The game password is also a four-person variation of the game.

Printables: For your catchprase-playing pleasure, here are some ready-to-go word lists for you! Just click a list to open it, print it out, and then cut along the lines to create pre-made paper word slips. Or, for an even bigger list of words, check out my online game word generator, perfect if you’re playing with a laptop, iPod, or iPad handy.

Catchphrase Word List – Easy Words

Catchphrase Word List – Easy Words 2

Catchphrase Word List – Medium Words

Catchphrase Word List – Hard Words

Catchphrase Word List – Animals

Catchphrase Word List – Food

Catchphrase Word List – Household Items

Catchphrase Words – People

Catchphrase Words – Travel

Hopefully these word lists help you out, but if you like playing catchphrase, I’d recommend buying the electronic version of the real game. It’s a lot easier to play and keep score, and it has a ton of words. It makes the game a lot more fun.

Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.

What you need: You’ll need paper and pencil, or something else to write with (chalkboard, wipe-off board, etc.).

How to play: The object of the game is for one player to think of a word or phrase, then for the other players to successfully guess the word before their guesses run out.

Let’s say Eli, Lucy, and Zander are playing. Eli will be the first to think of a word, so he silently thinks of one: apple. Then he sets up the game on a piece of paper by drawing a shape like this:

Then, next to it, he draws blanks to represent each letter in the word (or phrase) the other players are guessing:

Now Lucy and Zander can start guessing which word fills the blanks. They do so by guessing one letter at a time. Say Lucy guesses the letter E.

Eli thinks of his word. If the letter Lucy guesses appears in the word, Eli fills it in every time it appears:

Now Lucy and Zander know one letter of the word. Next, Zander might guess the letter T. But Eli knows the letter T isn’t in his word, apple, so Eli marks it as an incorrect guess by beginning to draw a hanging stick figure. He also writes the incorrect letter down below, so Lucy and Zander can keep track of their incorrect guesses:

Say Lucy guesses the letter P. Eli fills in all of the P’s in the word:

The game continues with Lucy and Zander guessing letters. If Eli completes the drawing of the stick figure, like this:

…that means that Lucy and Zander lose because they didn’t guess the word in time. But if Lucy and Zander correctly guess all the letters in the word or the whole word itself at any time, they win.

Then start another round! We usually played that the person who guessed the word (or last letter) correctly got to choose the next word or phrase.

Ah, this game got me through lots of long hours of high school economics class. Some of the hardest words to guess are short words with few vowels, like black. Rare words like myrrh and hymn are great, too.

Hangman is easily adaptable for themes: just have players think of words or phrases to fit a particular area. (History hangman, anyone?) It’s a great time-filler, too, and works well with classes when there’s some time to kill.

Printables: Not that it’s necessary to play the game, but if you’d like a pre-made hangman printout, just click here and enjoy!

What it is: A simple, silly talking game with no winners or losers. Great for kids.

Best for: Group of 6 to 12.

What you need: Just people to play.

How to play: Sit all of your players in a line. The player at one end of the line (we’ll call her Janna) thinks of a phrase or saying. It can be something made-up; in fact, it’s often funnier if it is. Something like, for example, “The cow ate the apple pie.” It can be as silly as Janna wants, about people in the room or about something random.

Once Janna thinks of her phrase, she whispers it quietly in the ear of the player next to her, Robby. Robby listens carefully, and then once Janna finishes whispering her phrase, he leans over and whispers it in the ear of the player next to him. The game continues like this, with the phrase being passed all the way down the line of players.

Now if Robby doesn’t clearly hear the phrase Janna whispers or it doesn’t make much sense to him, he CAN’T ask Janna to repeat it – that’s a rule. Each player is only allowed to say the phrase once. So if Robby didn’t hear right, he just has to guess the best he can at what the phrase might be and whisper it to the next player.

That’s where the fun of the game comes in, because by the time the phrase reaches the end of the line, it’s usually so different from the original as to be silly. Once the last player (we’ll call him Benny) has the phrase whispered in his ear, he repeats it out loud to the other players, and then everyone laughs at the absurd differences in the sentences; perhaps as what started as “The cow ate the apple pie” ends as “Now Nate learns to fly.”

To play another round, have Janna move to the end of the line and let Robby start the next phrase.

Variations: Telephone is a good simple game, but there are some more involved – and fun – variations involving charades and drawing/writing.

What it is: A fun kid outdoor game (and one that involves pegging, if you like those kind) that actually has nothing to do with potatoes (even though they’re like one of my favorite foods).

Best for: A big group of about 20.

What you need: A big open area. A flat, grassy field is perfect. You’ll also need some sort of ball, which you will be using to peg each other. I’ve played with a kick ball, but you could also do a tennis ball (ouch) if you’re tough or a hacky sack or soccer ball.

How to play: First, assign each player a number, starting at 1 and ending at however many players there are. (Players will need to remember their number, but not anyone else’s.) One person, like Toby, starts out as it. He stands holding the ball and everyone else stands around him in a circle.

To start the game, Toby takes the ball and throws it straight up into the air as high as he can, at the same time shouting out a number that he knows belongs to one of the other players, like “Seven!” And as soon as Toby shouts out a number, all of the players including Toby run away from the ball as fast as they can – all except player number seven, who we’ll call Julia. As soon as Julia hears Toby call her number, she runs to catch the ball (or pick it up as fast as she can, if she doesn’t catch it). And as soon as Julia is holding the ball in her hands, she shouts “SPUD!” as loud as she can, and all players immediately freeze wherever they are.

Julia then gets the chance to peg another player to get him or her out. She must freeze where she’s standing, too, but she can look around and survey who’s closest to her. Say she decides to aim for Robbie because he’s closest. She gets to take three steps towards Robbie and then has one chance to peg him.

If Julia succeeds in pegging Robbie, he gets the letter S. Once a player gets an S-P-U and D, they’re out of the game. If Julia misses or Robbie catches the ball, she gets an S. While he’s being targeted, Robbie can’t movie his feet or he gets an S, and Julia can’t move hers, either, or she gets an S.

Once Julia or Robbie has a letter, Julia picks up the ball again and gets to start a new round by throwing the ball high in the air and shouting out another number.

The game continues until only one player remains, and he or she wins.

Variations: For a shorter version, you can play single elimination, meaning as soon as a player is tagged once, they’re straight out of the game.

Also, depending on the ball you’re using and the ages and strength of your players, you might want to do away with (or modify) the take-three-steps rule.

Caution: As with all throwing-and-pegging games, don’t hurt each other. Only allow pegging from the shoulders down, and make sure the size and hardness of the ball is adequately matched to the age of your players.

What it is: A big-group indoor memory and guessing game. Entertaining and great for teens or adults.

Best for: A big group of at least 10 people.

What you need: A slip of paper for each person to write on, pens to write with, and a hat or bowl to collect your slips of paper.

How to play: First, pass out the pens and paper and have everyone secretly write a name on their slip. It can be any name – usually a celebrity or famous character, but it could be a made-up name too. Mostly, it should be a name that other players wouldn’t immediately associate with you (this is an important part of the strategy of winning the game).

Players fold up their slips of paper and put them all in a bowl or hat. Then one player (who, to avoid giving him or her an unfair advantage, shouldn’t be particularly good at identifying the others’ handwriting) goes through and reads all the names out loud, probably a couple of times, just to make sure that everyone knows all of the names. Players should listen carefully when the names are read aloud, because that’s the last time they’ll hear them.

Then the game can start. At first, it’s every man for himself, and the object for each player is to form the biggest “corporation” by pulling other players onto their team. Players take turns guessing which name another player wrote. If the guess is correct, the guesser gets that player on his or her corporation. If the guess is incorrect, the guessed player gets a turn to guess somebody else’s name.

So let’s set up a sample game to illustrate. Alyssa, Jared, and Savannah are three players playing with their friends. The players just heard all of the written-down names read aloud, including the names Socrates, Grace Kelly, and Bob.

Alyssa is selected to start. She starts by guessing which name one of the other players wrote on their slip of paper. So she would say something like, “Jared, are you Grace Kelly?” If Jared didn’t write Grace Kelly on his paper, he would say, “nope,” and then it would be Jared’s turn to guess. He might say, “Savannah, are you Bob?” Say Savannah did write down the name Bob on her paper. She says yes, and then she joins Jared’s “corporation,” or becomes part of his team. For the rest of the game, Jared and Savannah will work together  – they can confer and help each other, but ultimately Jared is the boss of the corporation (and the winner of the game if his corporation wins).

So after Savannah joins Jared’s corporation, Jared (and now Savannah) would get another chance to guess. After conferring with Savannah, Jared might say, “Alyssa, are you Socrates?”

Also, if sometime later in the game, Alyssa guessed Jared’s name, that means that Alyssa gets Jared and Savannah on her corporation.

So you can see that memory is a very important skill. First, it’s important for players to remember the names that were read off at the beginning. (There’s usually always one name, something common or nondescript, that manages to slip everyone’s memory until the end. The player who wrote down that name is lucky and has a good shot of winning.) It’s also important for players to remember who guessed what. Also, the bigger a corporation gets, the better they usually get, because there are more people conferring and helping each other guess.

It’s fun to watch the dynamics of the game, and each round will be different: sometimes it might be one giant corporation against another, or other times it might be one pretty big corporation against a lot of mom-and-pop businesses (one- or two-group teams who have managed to avoiding getting guessed out by the larger corporations). In the end, there will be one giant corporation with one player at the head, and that player is the winner.

Strategies: Mind games can play an important role in strategy. For example, if Jared wrote down the name Socrates, he might want to guess, when it’s his turn, “Jeremiah, did you write down Socrates?” Jared would know the answer would be no, of course, but it might confuse the other players. (“His name must not be Socrates because he asked Jeremiah if that was his name…”)

A lot of mind-reading and interpretation will probably happen as players try to guess which name was written down by who. So one of the best things you can do to win is write down a name that no one will associate with you (but not so obviously opposite as to attract attention).

What it is: A casual, often unorganized talking and guessing game.

Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.

What you need: Nothing!

How to play: The basic game is simple: players take turns quoting movies while other players try to guess which movie is being quoted. Example: Cody might say, “That wimpy deer?!” Everyone else would guess, “The Sandlot!”

So the details of how you play are up to you. You can be strict and say that only the person who guessed the movie correctly gets to say the next movie line. You could even keep score. Or, you could just play casually and have players quote movies as they think of them. It’s a great time killer game.

Variations: A fun (and natural) variation for a larger group of players would be for someone to quote a movie, and then if another player guesses the movie, instead of just saying the title, they could name another quote from the same movie to help the remaining players guess. So, if Cody said “That wimpy deer!?” and Gabby figured out the movie, she might add “You’re killing me, Smalls!” (This can actually be a pretty fun game all on its own.)

You could also require players to, instead of naming the movie, name the quote that directly follows the first quote. (Like, “You can’t run from me!” followed by, “Oh, wait, you can. You keep surprising me!”)

If you have an iPod or computer and someone with an impressive music library, you could also play name that movie with soundtracks or movie scores. Just have one person play snippets of different songs and see who can name the movie the fastest. Our kids love this variation!

Oh, and bonus if anyone can name the three movies quoted in the post’s pictures!

What it is: A simple game for big groups, easy enough for young kids, and also entertaining for older kids and adults.

Best for: A big group of at least 8 players.

What you need: Enough chairs for all of your players (minus one) and an open room big enough to hold all of the chairs in a circle.

How to play: First you’ll want to assign each player a fruit. Depending on the number and age of the players, you can do this several different ways. If you have young players or a smaller group, you might want to assign the fruits yourself, labeling players as strawberry, orange, apple, etc. Instruct players to remember their fruit. It’s okay (in fact, preferable) if multiple people have the same fruit, so you might use only two or three fruits.

If you’re playing with a large group of older players, you might let everyone choose his or her own fruit. Again, it’s okay (even preferable) if more than one person has the same fruit, but you might get someone who’s the only one with his or her fruit, and that’s okay, too. (It’ll probably be the creative quirky guy who chooses kumquat or something like that.)

Next set up the game by arranging all the chairs in a big circle and having everyone sit in a chair. One player will be left standing – say it’s Geoffrey. He’s It. Geoffrey starts the game by calling out the name of a fruit, like “strawberries!” As soon as he calls out a fruit name, any player sitting in the circle assigned to that fruit would jump up and try to find a new seat. Geoffrey would also try as fast as he could to sit in one of the open seats. In the end, a player (hopefully not Geoffrey) would be left without a seat. That player would then call out another fruit and the game continues.

If you have some players that are the only ones assigned to their fruit (like the kumquat guy), it would be a good idea to have Geoffrey call out more than one fruit. That way if Geoffrey called out “kumquat!,” the kumquat guy wouldn’t feel all alone and hurt because he wouldn’t have anyone else’s chair to take and would be forced to be It. In a case like this, you can make a rule that the person in the middle always calls out two fruits, or you could leave it up to the person to call out however many fruits he or she wanted.

You can also call out fruits by saying things like, “Any fruit that is red” or “Fruits with pits” or “Berries,” phrases that describe multiple fruits.

Either way you play, at any time, the player in the middle also has the option of calling out “Fruit basket!” When that happens, all players get up from their chairs and find a new one. Mass pandemonium and good fun ensues as everyone tries not to be left without a seat. The game continues until you want to stop.

Rules: You can set a rule that a player getting up from a chair must find a new one at least two seats away (to encourage players to get up and run around). Also, if you’re halfway through your game and realize that there’s one or two fruits that no one’s calling because everyone’s forgotten about them (like that kumquat guy), you might want to remind everyone of everyone’s fruit.

Variations: There’s a get-to-know-you version of this game played with traits instead of fruits. The fruit basket game is also similar to another game, castles and beavers, in a lot of ways, except you’re inside instead of running around outside. Both are a lot of fun.

What it is: A visual spying and guessing game, entertaining for younger kids, and, when I was a kid, my family’s game of choice while waiting for food in sit-down restaurants.

Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.

What you need: Just at least two people to play. And something relatively interesting to look at (this would be a hard game to play in an empty room with white walls, for instance).

How to play: It’s a pretty simple game. One player, like Jennie, looks around the room and picks something she can see. Then she says, “I spy with my little eye something ____,” filling in the blank with an adjective that describes the object she spies (traditionally a color).

So say Jennie’s object was a blue ceramic flower pot (like this one) sitting in the Mexican restaurant where she was waiting with her family.

Jennie would say: “I spy with my little eye something blue.” Then the other players would look around the room for something blue and try to guess Jennie’s object.

“Is it the blue border on that poster of the chili peppers?” someone might ask. Or, “Is it that vase holding the flowers by the door?” Jennie would say shake her head no until someone guessed the right object. Then the person who guessed right gets to choose the next object. And everyone would play happily, spying and guessing until the waiter brings their chips and tacos and enchiladas. Yum.

Strategies: Of course, it’s wise to not be staring at the object you’re spying while you say “I spy…” That was the tragic mistake that always got my youngest siblings.

Best for: group of about 8ish.

What you need: Nothing other than people to play and a room with chairs for everyone to sit in.

How to play: Start by having all your players sit in a circle. Choose one player’s chair to be the head chair, then the chair to the right of the head chair to be the last-place chair.

Then each player gets to choose an animal, with a hand motion and sound effect to go with it. So, for example, if Phil were playing, he could choose an alligator as his animal, slap his hands together for the hand motion, and say “chomp!” for his sound effect. Each player needs his or her own animal. Other ideas are a lion roaring, a bird tweeting, anything. Don’t be afraid to get creative – I’ve played where someone chose a lemming, made the sign their hand fall over a cliff, and the sound effect saying “ahhh!”

Once everyone’s chosen their animal, sign, and sound effect, go around the circle a couple of times and give everyone a chance to repeat everyone else’s sign (you’ll need to remember these to play the game). When everyone feels like they’ve got each other’s signs down well enough, you can start the game.

The object, just like in the game signs, is to pass the “sign” around the circle. Players also try to work their way to the head chair by not messing up. The trick comes in keeping the rhythm and remembering who has what sign.

First set up the rhythm of the game by having all players clap along together: two pats on your lap, followed by one clap. (Think “we will rock you.”) Have everyone clap for a little bit to get the rhythm set. Start out slow so everyone can get used to the rhythm.

Once players have the rhythm down, the player in the head chair can start the game – we’ll say it’s Phil. Phil would start my making the sign and sound effect of his animal (the alligator) on a clap beat, then on the next clap beat making the sign and sound effect of another player’s animal (say Marianne’s fluttering butterfly). On the very next clap beat, Marianne would accept the sign by making her own butterfly sign, then she would pass the sign on to someone else by making someone else’s sign and sound effect.

If a player messes up, either by combining the wrong sign with the wrong sound effect, or accepting or passing a sign off-rhythm, or failing to accept the sign at all, the game stops and that player moves to the last seat in the circle, while other players move up a seat. The goal is to make it to the head chair and stay there, obviously proving that you’re the most hand-eye coordinated, animal sign-passer, sound-effect making, on-rhythm player there. How’s that for bragging rights?

Variations: If you want to make the game more challenging, you have a couple of options. First, you could just speed up the rhythm as you go, so everyone’s giving and receiving signs faster and faster. Second, either instead of (or in addition to) speeding the game up, you could make every sign “stick” to its original chair. So, say Marianne with the butterfly sign messed up and had to move to the end of the circle. She wouldn’t take her butterfly sign with her; instead, she would adopt the animal of whoever was in the last chair, while the player who moved up into Marianne’s chair would become the butterfly. This becomes challenging because you have to remember what your sign is, especially if there’s a lot of changing seats involved. It’s a lot of fun that way, too.

What it is: More of an activity or chant than a game with a winner and loser, but a perfect activity to occupy long car trips.

Best for: Smaller group of 3 to 6 players.

What you need: Just people to play!

How to play: Players take turns going through the alphabet and saying the following sentence:

My name is ___, my husband’s/wife’s name is ___, we live in ___, and we sell ___.

The first two blanks are always filled by names, the third blank by a place, and the fourth blank by anything you could sell (which often leads to silly results).

So, the first player would start with A and say something like this:

My name is Abigail, my husband’s name is Adam, we live in Amsterdam, and we sell apples.

Then the next player would take the next letter, B, and say something like this:

My name is Bridget, my husband’s name is Brandon, we live in Bermuda, and we sell bouncey balls.

Players just take turns, going in a circle, until you go through the whole alphabet. I suppose you could play this game competitively: If a player takes longer than three seconds to fill a blank, they’re out. But me and my sisters always just played for fun and helped each other think of words when we got stuck. It’s a nice, calm activity, if you want one of those. And it can help younger kids with their phonics skills, too.

Variations: Hmm, I can’t think of any variations. Anyone have any to share?

What it is: A guessing game for two or more players.

Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.

What you need: Just your brains.

How to play: One player (let’s call her Tasha) first gets to think of a noun (a person, place, or thing). Once Tasha has a noun picked out, the other players then get to guess by asking questions that can be answered with a yes or a no. If you’re playing by the strict rules, players only get to ask 20 questions, and if they haven’t guessed by then, Tasha wins. If someone does guess what the object is, that person gets to think of the next thing to guess.

So here’s how a sample game might go: Tasha picks the noun “fire hydrant.” Say she’s playing with one person, her friend Leroy. The game might go like this:

Leroy: “Is it a person?”

Tasha: “No.”

Leroy: “Is it a thing?”

Tasha: “Yes.”

“Is it alive?”

“No.”

“Could I hold it in my hand?”

“No.”

“Is it made of metal?”

“Yes.” …

And the game would go on like that until Leroy uses up his 20 questions or until he guesses what the object is. It’s a great game for filling up long hours on car rides or for playing on walks. And you can go by the 20-question limit if you want, but I never really have. We just ask and guess until someone guesses right, then it’s their turn. And if you’re playing with little kids or just playing for fun, you could allow hints, too, especially if it’s taking a long time to guess something.

We also usually play with concrete nouns, things that you could see, touch, or feel. If you want to allow or disallow abstract nouns (like honor, love, capitalism…), you should probably specify beforehand, either way.

Some of the hardest-to-guess objects I’ve played with are confetti, trash bags, stop signs, and…oh, fire hydrant.

Variations: No, because and breakfast combo are some more difficult variations on this classic game. And poodle is a slightly sillier one

Oh, but what it is: A fast-paced, fast-moving card game, good for big or smaller groups of people, and always a crowd pleaser.

Best for: 4 to about 10 players.

What you need: You’ll need a deck of playing cards (two if you’re playing with a big group. It’s okay if they don’t match). You’ll also need spoons, either the metal or the plastic variety, enough so that every player minus one can have one.

How to play: Set the game up by sitting all players down in a circle on the floor. Put all the spoons carefully in the middle of the circle, with handles facing outwards, like this:

Shuffle the cards, then deal four cards to each player. Put the remaining cards face-down next to one player that you designate as the starter (we’ll call the starter Max for this game).

The final object of the game is to grab a spoon from the middle of the circle and not be the one player left without a spoon. You can grab a spoon when you either have four cards of the same kind (four aces, four kings, four twos, etc.) or when you see another player grab a spoon.

Play starts with Max, who draws a card from the deck, looks at it, and then either discards it or switches it for a card in his hand and discards that one. So remember: the goal is to collect four of a kind. If Max is holding an ace, a king, a two, and a six, and he draws another two, he’d probably want to keep it, so he could exchange the two for the six and discard the six.

Max discards the card face-down into a pile in front of the next player in the circle (say it’s Annie). Annie then picks up the card, looks at it, and either discards it or switches it for a card in her hand and discards another. She discards in front of the next player, and play moves like that all the way through the circle. Each player can only pick up the cards directly in front of them. The last player in the circle starts a discard pile near Max, which he will draw from when the original deck runs out.

So that’s basically how the game works, with each player trying to collect four of a kind. And all players are drawing and discarding at the same time, moving as fast as they can or want. Each card must go though every player’s hand, though, so if Annie is slow, she might have a pile build up in front of her (while the other players urge her on).

So the goal is to collect four cards of a kind. Remember Max with his two twos? Let’s say he finds the other two twos in the deck, so then he’s holding four cards of a kind. He can immediately grab a spoon from the middle of the circle. And as soon as the other players see Max grab a spoon (or, really, see Max starting to grab a spoon), they can grab a spoon, too, but one person, like Annie, will be left without a spoon. Then Annie would get a letter S. Next time she gets left without a spoon, she gets a letter P, then O-O-N, and then when you get all five letters, you’re out of the game.

When a player leaves, take one spoon away, too, so the number of spoons is still one less than the number of players. Play until one player remains: the winner.

Strategies: The “right” way to play this game is to carefully watch your cards, so you can collect four of a kind, but also always keep one eye on the spoons so you’re never left without one. If you wanted, you could also just watch the spoons and forget about your cards (but you still have to go through the motions of picking up each card and putting it in the discard pile).

When collecting cards, sometimes if you see two of one kind go through the deck, you might want to pick up the third one, so the people on down from you don’t collect four of a kind, or so if the other two cards make it through the rest of the circle unwanted, you can collect them.

If you’re the first to have four of a kind and grab a spoon, it’s fun to take it as quietly and as secretly as you can, and then hide the spoon and pretend to keep playing. If no one saw you, it might be a few minutes until someone looks at the spoons, counts them, and realizes there’s one missing. I’ve played sometimes when all but one or two spoons were taken, and the last two or three people in the game kept playing, searching for four of a kind, not even realizing that the spoons were gone. Those times are fun.

Variations:  If you want a faster game, do single elimination: a player is out as soon as they fail to grab a spoon one time (no more counting S-P-O-O-N). You also don’t have to put the spoons in a neat circle. Sometimes we pile them all messy, like this:

Then (especially if they’re metal spoons), it’s harder to take a spoon without making noise, which makes the grabbing-for-the-spoons moment at the end more rowdy and rough.

If you really like rowdy and rough games, try putting the spoons not in the middle of the circle, but somewhere else, like in the next room, behind a couch, up the staircase…. That sure leads to some rowdy games. Then it’s pretty impossible to sneak away from the game to grab a spoon, so everyone ends up running and jumping over each other to get a spoon at any cost. It’s a lot of fun, usually something kind of like this:

Oh, and one more thing: if one time you really really want to play this game, but you can’t find any spoons anywhere, so you think, “Hey, why don’t we just play with forks instead?” … um, don’t do it. Just don’t.

What it is: A talking, thinking game for anywhere from two to a busload of players. This is also one of those games where you need someone who knows the “secret” and other players who are clueless.

Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.

What you need: Nothing! Well, just people to play, at least one who knows the “secret” and at least one who doesn’t.

How to play: The object of the game is for players to discover what can be taken through a hypothetical set of green glass doors. Players who know the secret give other players hints (or further confuse them) by saying “I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m bringing ___, but not ___,” filling in the blanks with an object than can go through the green glass doors and an object that can’t, respectively.

So players who know the secret might say things like this:

I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m bringing a poodle, but not a dog.

I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m bringing the moon, but not the sun.

I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m bringing a puddle, but not water.

I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m bringing boots, but not sandals.

I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m bringing Harry Potter, but not Ron Weasley.

Have you figured it out yet?

Players who don’t know the secret to the game can then try their own sentences, maybe something like, “I’m going through the green glass doors, and I’m bringing a lamp shade, but not a light bulb?” To which the in-the-know players would respond with, “Nope, you can’t go through the green glass doors” while shaking their heads sympathetically. The game can continue indefinitely, and pause and resume as needed, until all players know the secret. It’s perfect for filling long hours during car trips.

So do you know the secret yet? Do you know what can be taken through the green glass doors? (I’ll give you one hint: the fact that you’re reading this post and not playing this game out loud should be a huge help to you.) Oooh, I know! How about, if you still don’t know the secret, leave a comment in the form of “I’m going through the green glass doors and I’m taking ___ but not ___,” and I’ll respond with a yes or a no! And, if you already know the secret, you can post mysterious, enigmatic sentences to confuse all the clueless people! It’ll be like a massive online, ongoing version of green glass doors! Awesome!

Or…since you’re probably reading this blog to figure out how to play, and if you really really really want to know and have no will power at all, or any desire to experience that awesome “a-ha!” moment when you figure out the secret yourself, click here to find out.

Variations: My mom and sister play the same game but call it Fanny Dooley, where Fanny Dooley a made-up lady and phrases take the form of “Fanny Dooley has ___ but not ___.” I’ve also heard the game called “deep but not profound” (which I think is clever, funny, and awesome).

Also, for a very similar game with more flexible rules, check out going on a picnic.

What it is: Originally a board game, but it’s become a common classic, and you don’t need to buy the game to play your own version. It’s a drawing word-guessing game for groups of any age.

Best for: Group of at least 4 players.

What you need: You’ll need something to draw on, like a big pad of paper and marker, a chalk board and chalk, or a wipe-off board and dry erase marker. Or even just a stack of blank paper. You’ll also need slips of paper with words written on them and a hat or bowl to put them in. (Or, you can use my online word generator!) Optional: a stopwatch/hourglass/clock, and a piece of paper to keep score.

How to play: The game is pretty simple: players take turns silently drawing different things while their team tries to guess what the drawing is. Teams compete against each other to have the most guessed words and win the game.

The way you set up the game can vary; pictionary allows for a lot of flexibility. For this post, let’s pretend you’re going to play with a big group divided into two teams.

Before the game starts, you’ll want to come up with some things to draw and write them on slips of paper (see the end of this post for some pre-made lists). The objects can be as hard or as easy as you want. If you’re playing with little kids, easily illustrated nouns like sun or bear would probably be good; if you’re playing with teens or adults, throw in some abstract nouns like honor, some adjectives or verbs like upset or dance, or maybe some idioms like have a cow.

Once you have your slips of paper ready, fold them up and put them in a bowl or hat. Then divide your players into two teams.

If you have one drawing surface, have teams take turns sending up a player to pick a word from the hat and draw it in a pre-designated amount of time. If the team guesses the word before the time runs out, they get a point. (Or, if you want to designate hard and easy words at the beginning, you could assign different point values to different words.) Then the other team takes a turn.

If you have two drawing surfaces, you could have each team send up a player and have them draw the same word at the same time (hiding their drawings from the other team). First team to guess the word wins the round.

At the end, tally up points and announce a winner!

Variations: Instead of having a player draw one word before the time runs out, you could let team members draw as many words as their team could guess before the time runs out, if you like that sort of fast-paced action.

You also don’t have to keep score or keep time if you want. You don’t even need two teams. You could just play with a big group of people and take turns drawing, with slips of paper or with players thinking of their own words to draw. Players take as long as they need to draw. The first player who guesses correctly gets to draw next.

Printables: Want some ready-to-go pictionary word lists? Click any of the links below, print out the lists, cut into strips, mix and match, and enjoy! Or, if you want word lists you don’t have to print out, check out my word generator.

• Pictionary Word List – Easy Words
• Pictionary Word List – Easy Words 2
• Pictionary Word List – Medium Words
• Pictionary Word List – Medium Words 2
• Pictionary Word List – Hard Words
• Pictionary Word List – Hard Words 2
• Pictionary Word List – Really Hard Words
• Pictionary Word List – Movie Titles
• Pictionary Word List – People and Characters
• Pictionary Word List – Idioms

And if you really like playing pictionary beyond the occasional class or family party, I’d highly recommend buying the real game. It has a lot more words, a board, and a better way to keep score; it’s an awesome way to play.

Variations: Looking for new ways to spice up your pictionary games? Try mixtionary, musical pictionary, paper telephone, or pictionades. Happy playing!

What it is: Just what it sounds like: playing catch with an invisible frisbee.

Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.

What you need: An invisible frisbee, ha! Okay, just kidding. This game is great because you don’t need anything to play, just somewhere to play. (Probably outdoor, but indoor could be fine – there’s not very much danger of an invisible frisbee knocking over your favorite lamp, is there? Well, I guess someone’s arm still could…maybe scratch the indoor idea…)

How you play: Well, it’s just like regular frisbee, but you’ve got to use your imagination a little when you throw and catch. Just pantomime throwing a frisbee to your friend Alex. He can exaggeratedly make a dramatic dive and catch it, and toss it towards your friend Lizzy, but maybe Stephanie jumps up and intercepts it and passes it back to you…just have fun! It’s not really a winner-or-loser (or even different teams) game, but more of a silly fun activity to pass the time (like when you’re on a long car trip and you take a pit stop and want to stretch your muscles but you left your frisbee at home). It can be a real blast, too (especially for people like me who don’t have a ton of athletic coordination to catch and throw real frisbees and like pretending for once that they can make an awesome dive or pass).

Variations: It doesn’t have to be invisible frisbee; it could be invisible anything! Hacky sack, basketball, football, soccer, you name it – just get creative and have fun.

Examples: Once I was with some friends, standing around, killing time, and our other more talented friends pulled out a hacky sack and started to play. We weren’t good enough to join the hacky sackers, though, so (maybe only a little out of spite) we started our own invisible hacky sack game. It was great! And probably way more fun than the real thing. Seriously.

Or, another time my siblings and I were in a big open field, I think after fireworks on the Fourth of July, and as we were walking back to our car, we were filled with so much energy and good spirits that we started tossing around an invisible frisbee, that became a football, that became a baseball. Ah, good times.

What it is: An outdoor, physically active group game (dare I say sport?) for lots of people.

Best for: Big group of at least 10 players.

What you need: First, you’ll need two flags (one for each team). These can be a variety of things; we always used two rags or cloths. You could also use two bandanas, t-shirts, etc., or, if you’re playing at night, two glow sticks.

You’ll also need somewhere to play, which can also be a variety of places, depending on how many people are playing and what type of game you want. I’ve played in front and backyards, big parks, parking lots…just anywhere with lots of space to run around outside, and a way to divide the playing field in two.

Finally, you need people to play, probably at least ten, but up to many more, depending on how big your playing area is. And, depending on how many people are playing, you might want a way to distinguish teams. (If you’re playing with a small group, that probably won’t be a problem because everyone could remember who’s on their team, but if you’re playing with a huge group, different colored t-shirts or bandanas might be a good idea, for instance.)

How to play: First, divide your players into two teams. Then, divide your playing area into two equal sides. (If you’re playing in a park, you can choose trees or other landmarks as dividing lines; if you’re playing in a yard, you could drag a hose across for a divider line; you could lay out shoes or t-shirts in a field; you get the idea.) Within each side, somewhere kinda far away from the dividing line, you’ll also want to designate two areas to be jails (this could be around a tree, in a corner, etc.).

Each team gets a side and a flag, and each team then puts their flag somewhere on their side. You could have a designated flag place picked out beforehand, so both team members know where the flags are, but it’s more fun if teams get to hide their flags, so the opposing team doesn’t know where the flag is. (If you do choose to hide flags, you might want to set some rules, like the flag has to remain visible, or it can’t be placed above players’ shoulders, etc.)

Then you’re ready to start the game. Your team’s goal is to find and bring the opposing team’s flag back to your side, while keeping your flag protected from the other team (because they’re trying to do the same thing). Any players are free to move anywhere in the playing area (on their side or the opposing team’s side) whenever they want, but here’s the catch: when you’re on the opposing team’s side, anyone from their team can tag you and send you to jail.

So that’s basic game play: players run onto the opposing team’s side and try to find and bring back the flag without being tagged and sent to jail. If one of your teammates is caught in jail, you can free them by running onto the opposing team’s side, making it to the jail untagged, and bringing back your teammate.

So while the basic game is simple, play can get very strategic and fun.

Your team could plan a specific attack, for instance, that involves all key players making a mass rush for the flag. Or, you could focus on defense, gather as many players of the opposing team in your jail as possible, and then make a move for the flag. You can have scouts that run and search for the flag, then come back safely and help plan. You can have decoys, trick plays, and kamikaze attacks. The possibilities are endless! It’s a great game for strategy, adrenaline, and teamwork.

It’s also a game that needs some well-defined rules beforehand, because disputes may often arise. Here are some things you might want to agree on with all players before the game starts:

1. When a player rescues a teammate from jail, do the two players get a free walk back to their side? Or do they have to make a break for it and run the risk of getting tagged again?
2. If you make a jailbreak, how many players can you bring back with you? One? Two? All?
3. Is puppy guarding allowed? (Puppy guarding: noun. The act of defensively guarding the flag by standing right on top of or very close to it.) How far from the flag must defenders stand?
4. What constitutes a tag? One-hand touch? Two-hand touch? Full tackle? (I’ve never played that way, but wouldn’t that be awesome?)
5. How will players in jail be penalized for breaking free illegally?
6. If a player finds the opposing team’s flag, grabs it, makes a run back to their side, and gets tagged in the process, what happens to the flag? Does it have to fall where it lands? Do the defenders get to take it back to its hiding spot?
7. Are challenges allowed? (I never played with challenges growing up, but my husband informed me how they work. Two players from opposing teams stand to face each other, right over the boundary line, both safe on their side. Then they declare a challenge, reach over the boundary line to grasp hands, and try to pull each other to their side. The player who gets pulled to the other side goes to jail.)

Any other rules anyone can think of?

Variations: Like I said, there are many ways you can play capture the flag: outside at night with glow sticks as flags, with big teams or smaller teams, during the day… But one of my favorite and tried-and-true variations is flour bomb capture the flag, perfect if you want to get a little messy.

What it is: An indoor acting game for big groups, funniest when you’re with a fun group of people comfortable with each other, especially if a few hams are included. Also a kind of fun spin on charades.

Best for: 4 to 12 players.

What you need: Just some creative people to play. Aren’t games like that great?

How to play: Gather all your players in a room and have one player (we’ll say it’s John) leave the room and close his ears. While he’s gone, the rest of the players in the room choose an adverb, one that describes how you might do something. An easy way to think of an adverb for this game is to think of words that end in -ly (for example, dejectedly, chivalrously, or simultaneously). Let’s say the players choose “chivalrously.” Once everyone has agreed on an adverb, call John back into the room.

John’s task is to guess the adverb by having other players act it out. He can call up any number of players in the room, give them any scenario, and then tell them to act it out “in the manner of the adverb,” or in the style of whatever adverb they’ve chosen.

So remember that the adverb is “chivalrously,” but John doesn’t know that. John would walk into the room and say something like this: “Okay, Chloe and Andy, talk to each other on the phone in the manner of the adverb.” Chloe and Andy would then stand up and start acting while John starts guessing and (most likely) everyone else in the room giggles. Players can get creative as to how they act in the manner of the adverb. For example, Andy and Chloe could act out “chivalrously” by being extra courteous on their phone call, or Andy could pretend to pick up the phone and say something like, “Good lady Chloe, what dost thou require? Might there be some dragon that I may slay for thy fair hand?” The main goal should be to act in a way that John can guess the adverb.

John can call up new actors and create a new scenario at any time. If Chloe’s and Andy’s acting just isn’t helping him guess, he can call up new actors and give them a new scenario. It’s also up to John how detailed his scenarios are. He can give players specific roles, like “Chloe, you’re a flight attendant, and Andy, you’re a businessman traveling to Europe. Act out flying on the plane in the manner of the adverb.” Or John could just give the players a general setting, like “Chloe and Andy, act like you’re at a Halloween party in the manner of the adverb.” He can ask everyone to act in the manner of the adverb, or just one specific player. It’s fun to watch different combinations of players act, sometimes even all players at once.

As soon as John guesses the adverb, the round ends and another player leaves the room, then the game starts again. It’s often fun to choose obscure or less well known adverbs that will be harder to guess (for example, instead of something like happily, try enthusiastically or whole-heartedly). We’ve even made up some adverbs before, for fun (Indiana-Jones-ly was a big hit). It’s a fun game, especially if you like charades or acting, and it leads to a lot of laughs, too.

Variations: This game is basically is a more specified and complex version of charades, and it can also be a lot more fun.

Printables: Want some ideas of good adverbs to use for the game? Here’s one you can view or print out. You can also find a list of adverbs in the “Wordplay” section of my Word Generator online. Have fun!

Adverb printable

What it is: A way fun classic, one I mostly played in elementary school.

Best for: Big group of at least 8 players.

What you need: A big, open area indoors (like a gym). And lots of non-hard balls (like ones made of foam or rubber). And lots of people to play.

How to play: Divide your players into two teams, and divide your gym into two sides with a line (real or imaginary) down the middle. Place all the balls on the line and instruct the players on both sides to stand a designated distance away from the line.

The purpose of the game is to get players on the opposite team out by pegging them (from the neck down) with a ball. So when someone says “go” or a whistle blows, all the (brave) players rush to the line to grab a ball and start trying to get people on the opposite side out. If you’re pegged anywhere from the neck down, you’re out and have to go stand against the wall. But if you catch the ball or get pegged above the neck, the person who threw the ball at you is out. Balls end up bouncing around on the floor, and you can pick one up at any time, but be careful no one pegs you in the process! Also, players aren’t allowed to cross the line in the middle.

The game turns into a big crazy melee, with balls flying and players running, throwing, and, of course, dodging, until one team has completely vanquished the other by getting all players out. There’s one catch, though: if everyone else on your team is out and you’re the last player in, and someone throws a ball at you to peg you, but you catch it, your whole team is back in, hooray! Then the game keeps going.

Variations: I’ll admit that I was never a huge fan of dodgeball—I’m just too afraid of things heading at high speeds aimed at hitting me, I think. But for some reason, I love glow-in-the-dark dodgeball, though it could be said that it’s decidedly more risky and intense. For a much less risky and intense version, try playing with softer balls with kids on a playground. I also think every-man-for-himself dodgeball is more fun, so give it a try!

What it is: An active, outdoor game that’s intense enough for the very athletic and fun enough for everyone

Best for: Big group of at least 10 players.

What you need: A good frisbee and a large field outdoors, preferably with a way to mark end zones (like trees, fences, shoes, or some other sort of boundary).

How to play: First, set up the field by designating the playing area with two end zones for scoring (like in football). It’s best if there are clear boundaries on the end zones and playing area, to avoid disputes later. Next, divide the players into two even teams.

Then you’re ready to play. The game is fundamentally like football: each team starts at opposite ends of the field, and each team tries to get the frisbee into the other team’s end zone to score. So, pretend you’re on one team, standing on the field, facing the middle. Behind you is the end zone the opposition is trying to get to in order to score—the end zone you’re trying to protect. In front of you, across the field, the other team is standing in front of the end zone your team is trying to get to.

One of the teams (say, for now, the other one) starts off with the frisbee and throws it off to your team. Your team spreads out to catch the frisbee as the opposing team rushes towards you. You so happen to catch the frisbee—woo hoo! Now you have to advance it up the field by passing to your teammates. But while you have the frisbee, you are not allowed to move your feet more than three steps; you can only pass. So you quickly pass the frisbee to a team member and your team starts advancing up the field. You can pass to team members in front of you or behind you, it doesn’t matter.

But someone gets clumsy and misses a catch, and the frisbee lands on the ground. Then it’s the other team’s turn, and they get to pick up the frisbee where it fell and move it down the field the other way. Your team switches to defense, trying to block the opposition from catching or throwing the frisbee, even trying to knock it out of the air. For example, as an opposing team member passes the frisbee, in a leap of glory you knock the frisbee onto the ground. Then it’s your team’s turn again, good for you. Or, if your team member actually catches the frisbee while playing defense, its also switches to your team’s possession.

Play continues like this, moving up and down the field. It’s usually pretty fast-paced, with a lot of running involved. The first team to get a player to catch the frisbee with both feet on the other side of their end zone scores. Then the other team takes a walk of shame to the other side of the field, and the teams switch sides until the next point.

Variations: I’ve played ultimate football before, which is the same thing, but with a football. Also, I’m sure there are variations on rules (for example, the three-step rule that allows the person holding the frisbee to take three steps between catching it and throwing it again could be the two-step rule), or more specific rules I didn’t mention. Anyone have any rules to share?

What it is: A not-too-silly, not-too-extreme, sitting down, quiet, yet still intense group game.

Best for: Group of at least 10ish.

What you need: Each player needs a piece of paper to write on. You also need one die and one pen.

How to play: Everyone sits in a circle, either around a table or on the floor. One person starts out with the pen, and the person to their left starts out with the die.

Let’s say Paul has the pen, Tasha is to his left with the die, and Adam is sitting to Tasha’s left. When the game starts, Paul starts writing legible numbers, starting with 1 and going up to 100, as fast as he can on his paper, while Tasha starts rolling the die as fast as she can, trying to roll a six. As soon as she does roll a six, she gets to grab the pen from Paul and start writing numbers on her paper, while Adam grabs the die and tries to roll a six. As soon as he does, he grabs the pen, and the person to his left starts rolling. Play proceeds around the circle like this. The next time Paul gets the pen, he starts writing where he left off. The first person to write to 100 on their paper wins.

Variations: This game is a little like the candy bar game, sort of. But while the candy bar game is pretty silly, one hundred is better for older players, and it’s a good game to play if you have a big group and want a game to play, but still want to be able to talk and laugh, because the people who aren’t rolling or writing will be able to chat and laugh all they want without worrying about the game, until it’s their turn.

Update: I’ve also heard this game called roll-and-write, played with two dice where players try to roll doubles instead of a six, and where you can also make the game more interesting by encouraging tackling and trash talking.

What it is: An old classic, and one of my favorites—when played with people I knew well. Otherwise…well, let’s just call it a get-to-know-you game.

Best for: Big group of 10 to like 18 players.

What you need: A bunch of people.

How to play: Have everyone stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder. Tell everyone to put their right hand in the middle and then grab someone else’s hand (preferably with no peeking). Repeat with everyone’s left hand. Now you should have a big mob of people—a knot, if you will—and everyone should be holding on to two other people’s hands. The task? Untangle the knot! It will involve teamwork, communication, stepping over arms, twisting around, and probably lots of flexibility. The only rule is that no one may break a hand hold. Once the knot is untangled, you should have a big circle, or maybe two separate smaller circles, or maybe two circles that interlock. Either way, the knot is untangled. Ta da!

Variations: Playing in the pool can be extra fun because the weightlessness makes it easier to duck around and through the knot. Just make sure that everyone can reach the bottom! I’ve also played with a “doctor”—one person who isn’t part of the knot but who walks around and directs everyone on how to untangle it.

What it is: A fun indoor game good for parties, especially for families or younger teenagers.

Best for: Group of 10 to 15ish.

What you need: A pair of dice, a plate (or we always used a disposable pie tin), some random utensils (like a fork and knife, or maybe a spatula), assorted articles of clothing (sunglasses, a silly hat, scarf, and gloves are always good), and, of course, a few candy bars.

How to play: Sit everyone in a circle. Put the candy bar on the plate with the utensils and pile the assorted clothing nearby. Give the dice to someone (say Joe, this time) and instruct him to start rolling, with the goal of rolling doubles. As soon as Joe starts rolling, the person to his right (who, in this game, is Abigail) has to put on all the clothing as fast as she can and, using the utensils, attempt to unwrap and eat the candy bar. Joe also rolls the dice as fast as he can because as soon as he rolls doubles, Abigail has to stop, no matter how far she is in her process of unwrapping/eating the candy bar, take off the clothing, and pass it to Joe so he gets his chance to put on the clothes, unwrap the candy bar, and eat some yummy chocolate. Meanwhile the next person in the circle is hurrying to roll doubles, and…well, the game goes on and the candy bar travels all around the circle. Those not rolling the dice or trying to eat laugh and giggle at the silly sight of someone trying to unwrap and eat a candy bar with a fork and knife while wearing gloves and sunglasses.

Variations: If you’re playing with a bunch of germiphobes or people who just like cleanliness, you could set a rule that if someone’s sunk teeth into the candy bar, it’s theirs to keep, even if the next person rolls doubles before they can finish. Or, if you want a not-so-silly version to play, the game one hundred is kind of similar.

Update: Another blogger in this pingback mentioned some fun variations: “In my family, we always played with one die and switched turns whenever anyone rolled a six, always announced by everyone yelling “SIX!!!”” There’s also a link to another page with some ideas that would definitely up the game a little: try wrapping your candy bar in paper and masking tape and then freezing it before the game starts! They even mention switching any time someone rolls a 6 or a 1, which would definitely speed up the game. Definitely lots of fun variations to try! Just pick the ones that will work best for your group and have fun!

What it is: A talking game for two or more players.

Best for: 2 up to about 8 players.

What you need: Just two or more players.

How to play: The point of the game is to hold a conversation using only questions. Players take turns asking questions to each other, and the first person to say a statement is out. The questions don’t have to make sense or logically respond to one another; the trick is just to get another player to fall into the habit of automatically answering a question. So a sample game between Ian and Lilly might go something like this:

IAN: Why is the sky blue?

LILLY: What are you doing?

IAN: Where are you going?

LILLY: What time is it?

IAN: Where is my hairbrush?

LILLY: Where do you think it is?

IAN: I don’t know….dang it!

LILLY: Haha! I win!

(Ian just said a statement, so he loses.)

With more than two players, you can take turns asking questions in a circle, or players can ask questions specifically to other players, in any order.

This is a great game to play while killing time in the car, on a bus, waiting in line…you get the idea. So go ask some questions!