Five Favorite Indoor Games
It's Five Things Friday, and here's a fun one! Five indoor games our family can be pretty nearly obsessed with.
Rainy days are good days for game playing! Also, snowy days and holidays and extended family gatherings. Not all families are into games, but for us its been another excuse to gather around the table. As our kids get older and busier time with them feels increasingly rare and increasingly precious. Here are five of our favorite indoor games!
Euchre
At our house we have taught our kids this fundamental truth: learning Euchre is an important part of college prep work. We (and by “we” I mean “I”) can get rightly competitive about this game. Back in my Calvin University days my roommate Shannon and I were undefeated. I’m probably still seeking to live out my glory days, though not as often to such a victorious end. I’ll be fine though.
Boggle
For whatever reason, genetics put a brain for both words and speed in my husband Bryan’s head, giving him an unfair advantage. Probably to keep me humble in my euchre playing. As a rule, whenever we play Boggle- including with extended family members - we tally the points by adding up the points of EVERYONE and stacking them up against the points of Bryan. His family has played this way since he was a little kid.
As soon as that little square of letter cubes settles, the timer is flipped and the cover removed, Bryan’s pen hits the paper and it NEVER stops scratching down words. As the last grain of sand drains from the timer he is still writing. He beats our collective score approximately 99% of the time. If we beat him it basically goes on the calendar and becomes an annual holiday celebration. If there was Boggle Olympics he would win the gold, and I would never even be considered for the team. I’ll be fine though.
Things
There is no game that gets us rolling on the floor in giddy stitches like the game Things. Everyone in the family enjoys participating in this one. We bring it with us on every vacation and to every extended family gathering. It’s a very simple game where everyone in the group writes down a response to something like, “things that go bump in the night.” the responses are collected by a player and read. Each player takes turns guessing who said what.
Caution, it can sometimes get wildly out of hand- laughing til the belly aches and tears are squirting and dripping from the eyes!
4. Up & Down the River
This card game goes by many names and is a classic our whole family enjoys. As far back as I can remember my parents used to gather around our dining room table and play this with family and friends.
Players are dealt one card and have to guess how many tricks they can win. Then they’re dealt two cards and have to gamble another guess. Then three, four, five and so on. And then back down again with the numbers dealt. Points are distributed based on how many tricks won as well as the accuracy of each prediction. Simple. Risky. So much fun.
5. Bananagrams/Mad Libs
If Boggle and Scrabble had a baby it would resemble Bananagrams. This quick little word game of racing to build words off eachother can be tossed in the purse and taken along anywhere. Its been fun to watch the kid’s words evolve over the years from spelling out words like “poop” to words like “paleontologist.”
Our family has added a fun little twist to this game. Because we also enjoy Mad Libs, we started doing a Mad Lib after each round of Bananagrams, mandating that we are only allowed to use words from that round of Bananagrams in the Mad Lib. It makes for some deliriously silly stories!
These are just a few of our family favories! What are your favorite indoor games?