At the end of our recent Christmas party, the other Lauren (editor of our sister blog Rock My Style) casually asked us all if we had any recommendations for our favourite family games for Christmas. My recommendation for Cards Against Humanity was quickly shot down when she revealed that her ten year old niece would be present…ooops.

Granted Hector is still too young to sit still for any length of time when it comes to family games although I reckon Hungry Hippos is worth a shot! So this post is probably aimed at those of you with slightly older kids or perhaps will give you some inspiration for the years to come.

Both Ste and my younger sister are competitive board game-oholics. Immy will without fail produce a brand new game every single year and demand we play it multiple times. I’m not going to lie, there’s a part of me that inwardly groans at the thought of reading through yet another set of instructions and playing to sudden death. I’d really much rather disappear with a brand new book (often gifted to myself by myself) with a glass of fizz on the sofa to let my dinner go down. I know SO antisocial but there we have it.

But I accept these decadently selfish days are firmly over for a goodly few years yet. Hector will no doubt inherit his parents’ ridiculously competitive genes* and become a board game pro dooming me to yet more instructions and demands for just one more game. Arghhh!

Today’s post then essentially draws on the best of those board games I have been subjected to over the last few Christmases. For those of you who love a game to play over the festive period please feel free to draw inspiration from today’s post, for those of you of a similar mindset to myself I can only apologise profusely.

Apples To Apples

Apples To Apples is a bit like Cards Against Humanity but with a PG rating rather than an 18… The cards that go in the middle “the green ones” have much friendlier topics such as ‘delicious’ or ‘important’ than the more subversive versions found in the CAH game. Equally the potential answers, ‘the red ones’, are harmless too ranging from anything like ‘piranha’ or ‘The Isle of Man’. There’s still plenty of fun to be had with it though when the kids aren’t looking and I’ve since found out they make a Junior version too.

The Game With No Name

I attempted to explain The Game With No Name to the RMLtd Team and received a lot of blank and confused faces in return. It’s one of those games where you have to be there to really appreciate the fun and it’s always better after a drink or two as well.

To begin…each player is required to write down 1. A person 2. A place and 3. A film on individual pieces of paper which are folded up and placed in a hat. Once everyone has completed this initial step, players are sorted into two teams and then the game begins.

The first round is Pictionary, with one team member at a time attempting to draw the word that they’ve drawn out of the hat for the rest of his/her team. There are 90 seconds on the clock and if the word is not guessed then the player is not allowed to reveal what was written on the piece of paper. Don’t discard the pieces of paper from the first round; instead put them (still folded up) in a second hat for the next part of the game. Continue until all the pieces of paper from the first hat have been used up and make sure you keep score of the points.

The second round is Charades using the folded up pieces of paper you placed in the second hat. Make sure you’ve given all the pieces a good mix around so you don’t end up picking the same answers as your first round. The same principles as round one apply but this time you only have 45 seconds on the clock. It’s worth being in possession of a good memory from round one here as you’ll probably guess those correct answers from the first part of the game pretty quickly.

Then lastly it’s the final part of the game. You have ten seconds in which to say one word that describes what you have on your piece of paper saved again and shaken about in a hat from the second round. You can’t say any derivative of the word on the piece of paper. For example if you had ‘Iceland’ you couldn’t say ‘Ice’. You should by now be pretty familiar with the content of the hats so should be plain sailing by this point. Only after all the words have been said can you tot up your final score and see which team is the winner. Any unsolved mysteries can also be revealed.

Five Second Rule

Five second rule is essentially a game where you have…yep you guessed it…five seconds to name three objects according to the card that you pick from the deck. Everything from breeds of dog to celebrity couples is included so there should be something for even 6/7 year olds to get involved with and answer. The spiral timer is rather special too 😉

Twister

A veritable classic but all the funnier when your Great Aunt Enid has had a sherry too many and can’t quite reach the blue dot. I reckon I could actually get Hector involved in this game as he knows all of his colours and will adore spinning the arrow for other players.

The Hippy Headband Game

Essentially a play on the name game, The Hippy Headband Game actually comes with six floral headbands for players to wear during the questioning. Ask another player to pop a name card on your headband then each take turns to ask simple yes or no questions to discover who you are. The winner is the person who guesses the person on their head in the least amount of questions.

Absolute Balderdash

Absolute Balderdash is apparently the game you can win without knowing anything which annoys me slightly since I do like a bit of general knowledge myself.

Anyway the aim of the game is to get round the board first by hoping that other players will pick out your phony made up answer to questions that get read out from a series of cards. One phony answer picked equals one point. There is, I admit, a subtle balance between providing suggestions that are plausible enough to be believed but possessing the fun factor too…Probably best aimed at kids aged 12+.

And that’s about it for this year…no doubt Immy will magic up another game for us all to endure on the 25th and which of course I’ll try to capture via stories on my Instagram account. What games are a staple for your family on Christmas Day? Or perhaps instead you save them for Boxing Day instead… Either way we want to know which ones are your family favourites so please do share in the comments box below.

*despite not wanting to play, when I do I MUST win! No-one wants to be on my nor Ste’s team – so we often get bundled together and inevitably are victorious. It’s not pretty.

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