The Great Free Family Games Hunt

rosy · 30 November 2006 at 10:41AM

For this you need a lump of plasticene/playdoh/ blutack or similar, one of these is always in our house but otherwise I suppose you would need to purchase ( so not strictly in accordance with Martin's instructions). You could always make your own if so inclined though - recipe here http://www.dovesfarm-organic.co.uk/have-fun-with-dough.htm.
Once you have that, here's the game: In advance, someone has to write names of objects on little bits of paper. The person playing has to make a model of the object with their plasticene and the others have to guess what it is supposed to be. You could do this as a team game to make it competitive or just for laughs. You can use a kitchen timer to set a minute limit per go if you wanted, or leave it open ended. The good thing about this is it works for all ages ( for younger children give a picture instead of a word on their paper ) and you can make it as simple ( eg, make a tree, a fork , string of sausages) or as difficult as you like ( leaning tower of Pisa, fried egg, vacuum cleaner ) to suit the artistic abilities of those playing. Actually sometimes what you thought would be easy takes ages for people to guess and sometimes people come up with ingenious ideas for the harder ones. It's very funny though.

Somerled · 30 November 2006 at 1:29PM

maggiebee48 wrote:

Problems and Solutions.
Give everyone a pen and paper. fold paper in half. On the top write a problem eg 'I have smelly feet' or my father has thrown me out' the stranger the problem the better. Pass paper on folded so problem can't be seen. then each writes a solution to his/her original problem. They can be really funny!

Also called consequences but with more of a story, i.e.
1. write a name
2. met "write a name"
3. at "write a place"
4. What they did "write an activity"
5. What was the consequence " write the result"
Obviously there needs to be at least as many people as there are things to write.

Played this on wet lunchtimes at secondary school - some of the stories when read out were howlers.

Somerled · 30 November 2006 at 1:43PM

blowbrown wrote:

How about the alphabet game. You choose a subject such as bands, football teams, songs, objects found in a kitchen, boys names (the list is endless) You then go through the alphabet naming something in the category beginning with each letter in turn. ie boys name would be Alan, Billy, Charles etc. You take turn about and if a person cannot think of one in the alloted time they are out of the game.

A variation on this was played on long car journeys with paper and pencils.
Write out 7 categories, e.g. name, country, animal, fruit, etc. across the top of the paper. Then form a table with space to write answers underneath say for 20 sets of answers.
Take it in turn to choose the start letter by having a person who starts by saying "A" out loud and then continuing the alphabet silently. Another person whose turn it is says stop which should result in a letter (that is immediately said out loud so that every one can hear), NB. the person who says stop can attempt to go for a more difficult letter, ie. q, x.
Then the rush is on to get an answer for each of the column headings. The first person to finish then says "Stop" and you then tally up the points.
A unique answer, i.e. only one person has it, scores 10 otherwise a correct but duplicated answer scores 5. No answer scores 0.
Then the game continues inthe same way until the 20 different sets of answers have been reached.

What makes it interesting is when the same letter comes up more than once and then trying to out-wit your contestants to get a unique answer.
Tally up the points and the winner gets a prize - possibly agreed upon before you start.

Sallys_Savings · 30 November 2006 at 1:53PM

We play a game by hanging numbered stockings (all those odd socks with stickers on) and peg them up on a piece of string. We then pop something different in each one and you have to write down which is in each one by feeling them.

sitronman_2 · 30 November 2006 at 2:05PM

A great after dinner game for when you are too stuffed to move away from the table. All you need is a button (pen and paper is optional for score keeping).

2 teams sit on oposite sides of the table (minimum 2 people per team). Flip a coin (or the button) to decide who goes first. The team to go first takes the button and under the table (out of sight of the other team) they swap the button around between each other. When the team captain says so the all put thier hands on the table with fists closed (the button will be in one hand). It is then up to one person in the other team to guess where the button is. Either by asking people individually to remove thier hand from the table, or by saying "Tip it" if they think they know where the button is.

If they guess correctly the button goes to that team. If they get it wrong (the button was in a hand that was asked to be removed), the button stays with the first team. We usually swap the button over if one team has had 5 consecutive wins, and play until one team gets to 20 points (1 point per win).

Its a fun game because its so simple! The instuctions above make it seem more complicated than it is.

Have fun !!

snooky · 30 November 2006 at 4:03PM

This is a real favourite in our house.

You need:

4 playing cards of the same number (e.g. 4 Jacks or 4 8's) for every person playing, but all the sets of 4 have to be different; so if you have 3 people playing you might have 3 Kings, 3 Queens and 3 Jacks.

teaspoons - one less than the number of people playing

Everyone sits around a table or on the floor and you put the teaspoons in the centre.
Shuffle the cards and deal 4 face down to each person.
At the same moment, everyone chooses a card from their hand and passes it face down to the person on their left (and then picks up the one the person on their right has passed them). Everyone keeps their hand hidden.
You carry on this way until someone has got 4 of a kind, then that person can take a spoon from the middle.
As soon as someone's taken a spoon, everyone else has to grab a spoon too. This is where it gets frantic. The person who ends up without one (there was one fewer than the number of people playing, remember?) is out and you take one set of 4 cards and one spoon out of the game, shuffle & deal the cards again and continue.

The winner is obviously the person left when everyone else is out.

This game is hilarious and we can go on playing it for hours.

Extra tips:
- use forks instead of spoons to make it even harder for people to grab one
- whoever first grabs a spoon during a round has to show everyone else the set of 4 that they got; if they didn't get 4 cards of the same kind, they're out
- you will find out how vicious and competitive some apparently peaceful people can get!

kodokan · 1 December 2006 at 8:06PM

CEREAL BOX GAME

Good for all ages, especially when the adults are tipsy. There's an advantage for the young and agile, though.

Get a cardboard cereal box, put it in the centre of the room, then each player has to pick it up using their teeth. No part of the body other than feet is allowed to touch the ground, ie, no kneeling to get within reach.

It's easy at this stage, so most if not all players can manage this.

Then cut off about an inch all around the top of the box. Again, all players try to pick it up just using teeth. Repeat. As it gets lower, any player who fails (usually by falling over in a comic manner) is out. You can get right down to just the bottom of the box, with just a few mm of card sticking up at the sides to grip with teeth. Usually the only players left at this point are under 10, or Olympic gymnasts...

PENNY UP THE BUM

Well, that's what it's known as in our house. Again, one for all ages. Put a pint glass at one end of the room. Each player has to put a coin (a 2p is actually better) between their bum cheeks (OUTSIDE of their clothes!), then walk the length of the room and deposit it in the pint glass. Lots of comic waddling like a duck and squatting at the end!

Hope I'm allowed to say 'bum' on here. Ooops, did it again!

welshminibar · 4 December 2006 at 12:16AM

This is a good one for those long car journeys at Christmas - it's completely adaptable but I'll explain how we play.

first we pick a category of famous people - we usually choose music but it could be sport or just a general free for all with rules like must be alive.

Its based on rule that the first letter of the last name has to be the same as the first letter of the next first name...and we take it in turns going round the passengers starting clockwise...eg

billy idol
iggy pop
pete seeger
shakin stephen ... now you can get complicated and on a doubler, change the direction back the way you came
steve winwood
woodie guthrie
glen miller
madonna ... a one namer is a change of direction...it gets quite funny when you start having a rally battle then...
meatloaf
marilyn manson
marilyn...

Anyhow, the longer you play the more obscure the names become - I never knew that I remembered Clare Grogan...

We don't play for points just for laughs. It's cool to get members of the same band/team/cast list and you can challenge when you think your opponents are fibbing

Then, after you have played the entire length of the M4, you will wake in the middle of the night shouting Donny Osmond or Van Halen. Always have Quincy Jones up your sleeve.

Enjoy!

merc_cook · 4 December 2006 at 5:55PM

This is a fantastic game that my great-uncle taught me to play and can be played with individuals or teams. All you need is a book and a piece of paper and a pen/pencil for each player/team.

Choose a selection of categories and write them down the side of each piece of paper. An example would be: Bird, Beast, Fish, Flower, River, Tree, Town, Country, Girl's Name, Boy's Name (you can make up you own categories although be careful not to make it too difficult)

Allocate one of the players as the referee - they will be in charge of keeping score.

Three different players select three different numbers which the 'referee' uses to select a page, line and letter from the book.
(The same player can choose all three numbers but it's more fun and fairer if this is shared)

The letter which has been selected is the letter for that round.

The players then have a certain amount of time - this can be 3,5 or 10 minutes (whatever you want really) to think of an answer for each of the categories using that letter.
An example for the letter 'A' would be:
Bird: Albatross, Beast: Aardvark, Fish: Anchovy, Flower: Anemone, River: Avon, Tree: Apple, Town: Aberdeen, Country: Australia, Girl's Name: Angela, Boy's Name: Adam.

At the end of the time, the referee goes round the players/teams and asks them what they have got for each category.
An answer which no-one else has is worth 2 points.
An answer which one of the other players/teams have is worth 1 point.
No answer or a made-up answer is worth 0 points. (The referee decides)
(This generally means that the weirder the answer the more likely you are to get more points - however this is not always the case!)

The score for each team for that round is then calculated.

This can be repeated as many times as you like - for a certain number of rounds or until you get bored - using a different letter each time as selected using the process described above.

At the end of the game, the player/team with the highest overall score is the winner.

xxisabellexx · 6 December 2006 at 9:27PM

blowbrown wrote:

How about the alphabet game. You choose a subject such as bands, football teams, songs, objects found in a kitchen, boys names (the list is endless) You then go through the alphabet naming something in the category beginning with each letter in turn. ie boys name would be Alan, Billy, Charles etc. You take turn about and if a person cannot think of one in the alloted time they are out of the game.

We also play this game in our house(and car!), my sister is 8 and calls it the ABC game, and she loves to do categories such as
animals
food
boys/girls names,
tv shows,
simpsons characters,
disney characters
films
celebrities

However this is also really great to play just with adults. There is a version in book form with category ideas and answer suggestions, but it can be easily done without the book, (usually a little help from the internet is good for when you really cant think of anything!). The books called AlienZulu if anyones interested (named after the first category in the book which is 'One Word Films') it also suggests taking a shot every time someone cant think of an answer, which would certainly liven things up!;)

Category ideas:
soap characters (or one particular soap if you know it really well)
cities
countries
cartoons
things that are yellow/red etc - quite a fun one!
people with places for names
songs with names in
songs with colours in

This ones not really a game as such, but our family loves doing them, works out a bit better as we are all adults in my house after my sisters gone to bed (but there are ones for her as well!)
https://www.quizardry.com
Completely free downloadable excel quizzes which are great fun! and when other relatives come up for xmas they always add their knowledge to our unfinished ones! (Also as a side note, theres also a hilarious 'crazy lookalikes' section under 'fun stuff'. Some of them are so funny!)

Theres always this one for the real movie buff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
Wierd but fascinating.

x

The Great Free Family Games Hunt

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free