Christmas Day Games - ideas please

[pebbles77]

I'm a huge fan of the name on the head game but my inlaws aren't fans and i've been asked to organise our games this year.

I'll looking for non bought games - ie not board games

Any ideas please?

Thanks

You can play a version of scattergories and rapidough without buying the actual games.

For scattergories, make few different lists of 10 categories, I.e country, flower, Olympic sport, alcoholic drink, car manufacturer and so on. Photocopy or print enough copies for each participant.
Print out the letters A-Z so that you can cut them into squares to put in a bowl, bag or hat.
Each person gets a list (the same one).
It's useful to rotate an adjudicator to manage the time, to pick the letter out of the hat and to watch for any cheating.
A letter is taken out of the hat and announced.
Every one has 90 seconds to think of a word for each category on the list beginning with that letter.
To score you need a word that no one else has. Adjudicators decision is final as there is always some terrible answers.
The next round will use a different list and a different letter.
The one with the most points at the end of all of the rounds wins.
We have a tendency to turn this into a drinking game where any duplicate answers involve a shot of sloe gin.

You can play a version of Rapidough as a follow on by cutting up some of the answers to the previous game and placing them in the hat. Keeping all answers for a certain category together keeps it simple.
Nick a few pots of the kids play-dough.
Split participants into teams of 2 or 3 and give each team a pot of dough.
One person from each team takes a category out of the hat and has to model that with the play-dough.
First team to guess what they're modeller is modelling wins that round.
Play until bored.

"Cat & Mouse" is a good one, you can make up the rules to suit the mood and the age range.

A "mouse" is just a cork with a string tied round it to make a "tail". Each Mouse player holds their mouse by the tail and all the mice stand in the middle close together; the Cat player holds something like a plastic funnel or jug - anything that can enclose all the mice, but not hard enough to cause damage when slammed down onto the floor or table.

At a certain signal (see below) the cat is allowed to pounce on the mice (i.e. trap the mice under the funnel or jug) and the mice try to escape. If the cat pounces at the wrong time, or a mouse gets pulled away at the wrong time, or gets caught - they lose a life or swap roles or whatever rules you choose to make the game go well. You could play it as a "winners and losers" game, but we play it just for everyone to have fun, and carry on until people get tired of it.

For the "pounce/not pounce" signal you could use a dice if the players are good enough at counting, but we usually toss or spin a coloured jamjar lid or a matchbox; if it lands one way up nothing happens, if it lands the other way up the pouncing and squealing can start.

And if you haven't got enough corks you may just have to drink a bit more wine!

I don't know how old everyone will be, but if they are all old enough to write/draw then I would suggest "Whispering Gallery".

Everyone has a piece of paper and a pencil. Everyone then has to think of some sort of phrase or saying and write it at the top of the piece of paper. It can be anything from a proverb, a song title, or anything you like really. They then have to pass the paper to the person on their left, who then has to draw whatever is suggested by the phrase underneath it. Then everyone folds over the top of their paper, so that the drawing is visisble but the phrase isn't, and passes it to the left again. The next person then has to write what the drawing suggests. You then repeat the process several times, ending with the writing part.

Then everyone opens up their paper, and has a good laugh at the contents. We once found that "Mind the gap, stand clear of the doors please" had turned into "Postman Pat and his white and white polar bears"!