Spending quality time with your child means a lot for your child’s development and emotional well-being. As games hold a special place in a child’s life, playing together is a fun way to bond with them. You can try making time for the whole family to play games together to get closer to your child, make them feel more relieved and open to communicating with you as a parent and help them improve their mental and motor skills.
Here are a few suggestions! You can try the games from the following list at your family game night.
- Pass It On!
The best thing about this play is that you only need some paper and crayons. The first player writes a combination of words like “a frog wearing a clown costume” and passes the sheet on to the next player. The second one must illustrate what is written and pass the illustration to the next with the written part folded. The third player’s role is to describe what they see in the drawing. After describing, they should fold the paper again (only the written part can be seen) and pass it on to the next player. The players keep doing this until every player plays. Then unfold the sheet and get ready for a mouthful of laughter! Set a timer for each player if you want to spice up the excitement.
- Crazy Eights
This one is best played with 2-6 players, but you can also play with more. The players deal five cards for each and place one card face up for the starter pile. You put the rest of the cards aside as the draw pile. The players can only play a card that matches either the number or the suit. For example, if the starter card is a 7 of spades, a player can play either a 7 of any suit or a spade of any number. If the player does not have a playable card, they must draw from the stockpile until they have a suitable card or the pile is empty. The first player who gets rid of all their cards wins.
- Balloon Tennis
Do you want to play a physical game but do not want to leave the house? This one’s for you! Just blow up a balloon and grab tennis rackets. Then split into teams and start your own tournament. Your kids will love running around and hitting balloons.
- Indoor Bowling
First, open up some space for your indoor bowling lane, then grab a ball and arrange 10 empty plastic bottles in a triangle – they can be half full if you want to make it a little harder. The formation should be like traditional bowling with four in the back row, then three, two and one in each of the following rows. Then you find out who can knock out the most bottles.
- Charades
As this is an acting game, you do not need any particular item to play. The players split up into two teams and choose one of the team members in each round to act out. In each round, one team chooses something for the other to act out for their teammates to guess. It can be a movie, book, TV show, musician, etc. You can keep this by turns as long as you want or set a goal score. Then, whichever team reaches that goal of correct guesses wins.
- Taboo
Although this is a well-known game, it would be a shame not to mention Taboo if we talk about family games to play at home. The game is played with two teams. One player from each team tries to describe the selected word on the card without using the main word and the side words. The rest of the team aims to guess the word correctly. The teller players change every round, and each team plays in turns. The team with the most correct guesses wins.
- Spontuneous
This one is not very popular but probably one of the best games for families to play together. All players write down several trigger words on their hit-list. Then, one of the players turns the timer and announces a trigger word. The first player must sing at least 5 words from any song containing the trigger list. If they can achieve this, they roll the dice and advance on the gameboard according to the number on the dice. Each player sings when it is their turn. The players who land on a clef must draw a card and complete the challenge it gives! The game continues until one of the players reaches the finish line.
You can also check out our ultimate toy gift guide by ages here!
What Are The Benefits of Playing Family Games?
- Develops Motor Skills: The games, whether played indoors or outdoors, develop children’s motor skills. For example, shuffling cards or rolling a ball and hitting the target improves the kid’s hand-eye coordination. It leads them to success later in playing instruments, sports, or hand skills. The games with the benefits of physical activity for kids also help them develop gross motor skills such as walking, running, and any physical action that uses large muscles. On the other hand, games like Pass It On above develop fine motor skills because it contains lots of writing and drawing.
- Expands Vocabulary: Many indoor games for families aim at describing or expressing something. For example, children learn new words from games like Taboo. It also pushes the players to be more creative and use various words as they have to avoid certain words when they try to describe the word.
- Improves Children’s Social Skills: Playing games can be much more effective in social skills than the benefits of children’s science activities. Playing games as a family gets you closer to each other, builds children’s cooperation skills, and makes them better team players. While playing games with family, children communicate with other people and improve their impulse control; they wait for their turn, follow the game’s rules, and gracefully accept victory or defeat.
- Develops Strategical Thinking: Many indoor games for family need you to be quick-witted because you have to make something out the everyday life to play, like balloon tennis or indoor bowling. Games like Crazy Eights also improve children’s strategical thinking as they try to get rid of all their cards before the others.
- Builds Self-Confidence: Although having fun is the aim, no one can prevent competition from family game nights. But competition is not always a bad thing. Competing and winning against the others show children how strong, clever and skilful they are. So, game nights for the family help your child in every way. Games give the children a chance to communicate with others, leading to a healthier self-image.
- A Good Alternative To Science Activities: Sometimes, you cannot keep children focused during a science activity. It is also probable that so many people cannot afford science sets or necessities. But some fun games to play with family might be what you need to make science fun and accessible! For example, balloon tennis can be a good representation of how gasses take up space, or indoor bowling shows the notion of force and speed.
How to Plan a Family Game Night
Planning a family game night might seem challenging. But you can easily gather around and have a nice evening with fun games to play with family. Here are some tips on how to plan a game night.
- First things first, schedule a convenient day and time for everyone beforehand. This way, everyone can attend without their minds being distracted by school or work. It also helps you to keep these family nights a regular activity.
- Discuss with family members what games they like. This discussion may introduce the other family members to new games and help you expand your family game collection. Deciding on a game that everyone wants to play keeps them focused on the game. That way, your family can spend fun and cosy evenings together.
- Clarify the game rules. One of the most complex parts of the game nights is that sometimes children can whine and complain about the rules if they lose. Setting all the rules clean before starting to play a game prevents everyone from all these unpleasant scenes. You can even put a prize or punishment to spice up your game nights.
- Everybody loves delicious snacks during family game nights. Decide on what snacks they would want to have while playing games. You can also prepare those together, which makes it even more lovely.
- Lastly, turn off the TV and the cell phones. Show your family that you care for this night and want to communicate and spend some time only with your family. This way, your children can also focus on the time you spend as a family together and do not get distracted by their phones or computers.
Bonus Suggestion!
Do you want to try something new and educational? Twin Science offers an entertaining and easy way to integrate games and science learning through Twin Kits. You and your children can spend quality time with our Twin Science Robotic Art Kit: they build robots, experiment with colours, and boost their creative power. Additionally, our Coding Kit helps your children learn and wonder more about the fundamentals of coding while having fun. You’ll be amazed to see how excited your kids will be, as they can make their own music anywhere by simply turning fruits into piano keys through the power of coding.
