Two super fun games to play at home with your children

If you can’t leave your house, you’ve children, and don’t happen to have a garden, these two super fun games can save your day.

a. Treasure hunt

The first of the super fun games to play at home is treasure hunt. It can be fun even if you don’t have a garden. Indeed, kids usually love to solve riddles to get to a final price.

Everything you need to play is: some paper, a pen, some envelopes, scissors, and some duct tape.

Here’s how you can organize your treasure hunt at home.

Plan your route and decide how many clues you want to create.
Write the clues on some paper and put them in numbered envelopes.
While someone distracts your children, you go and hide all the envelopes except the envelope number one. You can get really creative here and hide them under the sofa, in a pillow, in some trousers’ pocket in the wardrobe, under the carpet, in a drawer, under the table, in the scanner, in a box full of sand, in a shoe, etc.
Hide some small rewards with some of the clues. They can be cookies, coins, or bonuses like “tomorrow you can stay up till 10 o’clock” or “tomorrow you can watch tv for two hours instead of one”, etc.
Set the rules in advance. If you have more than one kid tell them that they have to stay together, always. They can’t search for clues separately. Remember also to add that they have to clean up or tidy up as soon as they’ve found a clue.

At this point you can start the game handing the kids the first envelope! Have fun!

b. Charades

Charades is a very popular miming game you can play with your friends and family.

All you need to play this game is a pen, some paper, and a clock or a timer.

Take the paper, cut it into rectangles and write one book title, a sentence or a movie title on each one of them. If your children are very young, you can replace book and movie titles with very simple actions like “to go shopping” or even single words like “reading”, “painting” etc.
Set the rules. Explain that all gestures are allowed, except silent mouthing of the words – or spelling of the words – others have to guess, and pointing at objects. Tell them that they have three minutes – or more, you decide – to mime the sentence they read on the card.
Make two teams.
A player of team A pick a card. At this point a member of team B starts the timer. Player A has three minutes – or more, you decide – to mime the sentence. In that time the other members of team A have to guess the correct sentence. When the time is out, they have one – or more than one, you decide – attempts to guess the right sentence. If they do, they get one point.
Repeat the same process of point 4 with team B.

If it’s your first time playing charades, here are some common gestures you can use:

– Use your fingers to show the number of words a sentence has.
– Use your fingers to show which word you’re about to mime. For example, raise your index if you’re about to mime the first word of the sentence.
– Hold your index and thumb at a distance of 1cm from one another to signal a short word.
– Hold your index and thumb at a distance of 4 or 5cm from one another to signal a long word

Now you can start the game and have fun.

Do you know some other super fun games to play at home with your children? Let me know in the comments below.

Credits

Original image by shelleywiart