As we enter March (aka the loud month as it is so windy), why not try out some great past time games that don’t include a TV, Playstation or iPhone, just some good old fashioned pens, paper and conversation!
- Charades – Who doesn’t love charades!! An old favourite which can be enjoyed by everyone. For anyone who doesn’t know, charades is where you act out the name of a song, film, book, TV series using nothing but actions! Not only does this allow children to be creative, it also improves confidence!
- Categories – Each person has a piece of paper and draws a table with 5 columns titles: Girls name, Boys name, Country, Fruit, and Animal (you can add more columns if you wish!). One person says the alphabet in their head and another person says stop. Whichever letter they stop on has to start each word in the columns. For example letter A : Annabel, Archie, Argentina, Apple, Ant. Once one person has all columns they shout stop! Then you can add up your points. Zero points for no word, two points for the same word as someone else and five points for a different word to anyone else. The person with the most points wins! (p.s you can play this game for as long as you like, even repeating letters to check peoples memory). Not only I this game great fun but it teaches children different countries, fruits, animals, and simply maths skills.
- Snap – A good old fashioned cards game that almost always gets heated! Deal out all the cards to the players. Do not look at cards and take it in turns to lay one down each. If the same number is put down one after another you all have to put your hands on the cards and shout snap! The last person to put their hand on the cards has to pick them all up. Aim of the game is to get rid of all your cards.
- Spoons – Great fun! Best played in large numbers. Sit in a circle and put spoons in the middle (if there are 5 of you place 4 spoons in the middle, if there are 6 use 5 spoons). Deal out four cards to each player. The aim of the game is to have 4 cards of either the same suit in consecutive order or 4 cards of the same number. So you pass one card to the person on your left so that one card travel around the circle. If you want the card that has been passed to you, you must pass another one on. Once you have four cards of the same suit or number you must secretly take a spoon from the middle. Everyone else must then grab a spoon. The last person to grab a spoon is out! So as soon as one spoon is gone make sure you grab one!
- Wink Murder – To be played in a big group. Send one person out of the room as the detective, then decide who is going to be murderer. Once the detective is back in the room the murderer has to wink at people and they have to die (they can make sounds, fall on the floor, be as creative as you like). The Detective has 3 guesses to find out who is the murderer.
These are my top five! Have you got any of your own?
Stevie