Christmas - parlour games?

Poppie68

We have a pack of A4 size playing cards and my husband made a board so we play Bruce forsyths Play your cards right...I fill a basket with wrapped naff and funny prizes with the odd decent one thrown in and let the winners of each team do a lucky dip. It is a really good laugh and no need for everyone to squeeze qround a table to play...

ciderwithrosie_2

We used to love playing 'Pit' in our family, think it has been renamed as 'Billionaire' more recently. It's a card game where you trade commodities to collect sets. So it involves a lot of noisy trading (everyone's shouting out '2,2,2,2, or 3,3,3,3,') to get someone with the same amount of cards to swap with them. There's also a Bull and a Bear card - one makes you lose points and one increases your points if you've got them in your hand when someone calls 'Billionaire' when they've got a full house, so there's lots of subterfuge trying to slip the 'bad' card to someone else and of course you can't give it away that you've got it or no one will trade with you! Lots of noisy family fun that even youngish children can play.

Knockout whist was another favourite card game

My youngest son's personal favourite was.. get some strips of paper and pens and everyone draws a funny head at the top and folds the paper over leaving a bit of neck just showing, the next person attaches a body to this down to just past the hips, folds it over and passes it on, the last person draws the legs and feet. then you all swap again and unroll. Great hilarity when you get the head of an alien wearing a tutu with stripey legs and football boots!

ciderwithrosie_2

Just looked on Ebay in toys and games and it looks like it's still called Pit or the shout out game - there's even a Simpsons version or Moshi Monsters - might have to buy a new one now!

Mrs_Imp

Another game where you have to be in on it, and it's quite amusing to watch others try to guess. Each person takes it in turns to say 'I'm going on holiday and I'm going to take...' Then they say what they'd take with them and the person in charge tells them if they can take the item or not. You can only take items beginning with the same letter as your first name. So ciderwithrosie could take clogs, but she couldn't take shoes. We end up with people coming up with really silly things to take.

Or, get everyone in to two teams. Each person writes something down on a piece of paper (an object or person is usually best) and they get folded up and put in the middle. Everyone takes a piece of paper. The idea is to act out what's written (like charades). The team that does it quickest wins. Then all the bits of paper go in to the middle and everyone picks again. The second round is describing what's on the paper. The third round is drawing it. You can add a playdough round too. It can get quite silly by the third round as people know what options there are so are trying to draw as little as possible.

TeamLowe

we have a quiz and there's enough of us for teams, usually there's a couple of questions that only the little ones would know the answer to, like about moshi monsters or whatever they're into. There's loads you can print off the internet and you can either make your own or again there's ones already done of guess who it is- think last year it was guess the celebrity's mouth.
Although my dad's always quiz master as he is, quite frankly, an insufferable know it all so it's not as fun when his team always wins lol

The past few years mum has found, probably from Asda, a set of crackers that have wind up reindeer in them for races which are great fun

tea_lover

Ring on a string!! Although have mentioned this to people over the years and am coming to the conclusion it's something our family made up