Party games

[ladyofastolat]

I'm on the lookout for children's party games played at traditional children's parties. We've got a list already, but would like an even longer list, so they can be whittled down to the best ones. So far we've got:

Musical chairs
Musical bumps (I was unvanquished champion of musical bumps as a child, but the ground was a lot closer then. I suspect that playing it now would result in bruises and broken things.)
Musical statues, ideally in its Musical Monsters form
Pass the parcel
Sleeping/Dead lions (naming dispute ongoing)
Pin the something on the whatever
Grandmother's footsteps
Oranges and Lemons (although even as a child, I never quite worked out what the point of the game was, and it always took so long, and once the chopper who came to chop off my head thumped my nose, and I cried.)
What's the time, Mr Wolf?
Poor Pussy

Quite a few more games come to mind, but I think they're more playground games than party games - e.g. The Farmer's in his Den, Red Letter, I sent a letter to my love, etc. We always clamoured to play Murder in the Dark when I was little, but never knew what we were supposed to do, so just milled around in the dark for a bit until someone screamed, whereupon we all went "er...", dithered a bit on confusion, and moved on to the next game.

By the way, the age of the special little birthday boy is 40, so don't worry about games being too complicated or likely to end in tears. But we don't want any of that teenage hanky-panky stuff, or games that involve singling people out to do embarassing things.

Comments

[purplecat]

Consequences goes down well at G's parties

We have something called the "Letter Box Game" that I can bring with us. It involves running around the "house" posting letters in the right box. We probably have enough sets of letters for about a dozen people to play.

Treasure/scavenger hunts always seem popular but take some setting up.

Kim's game.

Build a bridge from straws and pins.

I vaguely recall some game which involved a race to dress one member of your team in random silly costume.

Various versions of charades, including one which involves drawing popular book/tv/you-name-it titles.

Names on backs.

Wink Murder generally works better than Murder in the Dark, I've always found.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, Kim's Game - good for calming things down if all these 40-somethings get over-excited, the way they do. :-)

The Letter Box game sounds promising.

The main problem is that there's quite a lot of vagueness about arrival times, so we could have anything between 20 and 40+ for these games. 40+ is too many for several games on my list - but we could always organise sub-groups, in which some people play a game while everyone else mills and chats.

I was considering names on backs, but rejected it since I've only played it as an ice-breaker at adult parties, rather than one we used to play when young, but it could be a fun thing to do as and when people arrive. If G's played it at parties, then it counts as a proper children's party game. :-)

[purplecat]

I'll bring the letter box game with us. Once you have the bits it doesn't take a lot of setting up so we can use it or not depending upon numbers.

G has certainly played names on backs at parties, though possibly only her own. However we play it because I played it as a child so I'm sure it counts.

G. has put a vote in for charades of the "mime the title" variety and for a game she's just played at Brownies called Fruit Salad...