I just found out, an hour ago, that I am hosting Easter fun at my house. Wasn’t my decision, I guess- a text was sent out and I never noticed it. (Lengthy text, about nothing, from a SIL) Oh goodie! Just what I need with relatives that just came into town NOT! My elderly mother always feels comfortable and enjoys my hosting when the whole family comes to our house.
So far, with food, I’m okay. Husband is going to help and thankfully, we’ve had no rain this week!
Most of the “kids” are mid twenties to early thirties (10 or so) and are used to playing board games with us, but those can take a while and my husband’s only 'time off" day, this week, will be Sunday. He wants some space. Then it’s back to work on Monday.
Any suggestions for family games that are easy to play in groups? Thanks so much!
They’re all good kids but coming to a family event, they want to eat, socialize and then they typically do something all together. We’ve always been known as the “fun” place, (given my old occupation of always playing something fun and entertaining) and my kids have typically led the games, but I think they want a reprieve this time. Too short a notice.
We’ve done the Hungry Hippos adult version (with skateboards, plastic balls, and nets), but we aint doing that this year.
We may do something basketball-themed (with plastic eggs) since a bunch of us are Aztec alumni and they went to the big game.
Our family has a ritual of lots of Easter games we have been doing since me and my sibs were little and we are still doing them with our 20’s and 30’s kids!
Egg roll. Inside game. Take a plastic egg and tape it. Pick a spot in the house where you have a straight shot for a good 10-12 feet at minimum. Individuals get on the floor, one person at a time with the egg. At “GO” they have to push the egg with their nose - no touching it in anyway except your nose/head! Someone uses a timer app to record how long it takes the them to get the egg across the finish line (we use a wall as the finish line. Everyone cheers everyone on! Prize for the person with the lowest time. Yes, some of us are in our 60’s and still playing!
“Guess How Many” - inside game. Buy a large container of some type of candy - jelly beans, m and m’s - whatever. Everyone takes turns guessing how many are in the jar (I head this game and just use the serving size to determine an estimate on something like jelly beans!). They write it down and then we go around the circle and everyone gives their guesses. Person closest gets the jar of candy!
Hard Boiled Egg Bocce Ball. OUTSIDE game! We have a bag of inexpensive prizes. Everyone plays. Each round of tossing your egg toward the bocce ball target - whoever gets closest gets to pick a prize from the bag that round. Yes, your lawn will end up with broken eggs/shells! It’s SO FUN.
Word Scramble. Inside game. Everyone playing gets a paper/pen. I pick an Easter phrase and then at “GO” everyone has 2 minutes to spell as many words as they can out of the letters in the phrase. Something like “Abasket Family Rules The Easter Game” could be a phrase - whatever you want! Prize for the winner - maybe a plastic egg with $5.
Our final game is the one most coveted. It is a tradition my aunt who was like our grandma did with us when we were little and now because there are no grandchildren yet even on my brothers side, the 20’s , 30’s and 40’s are still playing. It’s the MONEY HUNT. My aunt would save change all year and leftover wrapping paper. She would wrap each coin in a piece of wrapping paper and then the people NOT playing hide all the wrapped coins in our large yard. We’re talking now $50 of change! The players have to hide in the basement until we hide it all and let me tell you, IT’S A HOT COMPETITION. They hunt the yard with a bag until no more seem to be left. They unwrap and count their change and then one person is crowded winner, but everyone keeps their change. After my aunt died, my mom collected the change all year that she would find on her daily 3 mile walks (till she was 88). This will be the 2nd year without my mom and so now I am in charge of the wrapping. It’s super silly, but a tradition I know my kids will carry on!
Favorite games always include Code Names. Fun especially with those that know each other and easy to join or bow out of (games run 20 min). Fun for those standing around and usually provide friendly conversation fodder afterward.
An easter egg hunt is fun. Just plastic eggs with jokes inside is fun. Prize (if you can think of one is great). Need a “golden egg”.
LOL! We were going through stuff for a garage sale once and my sister INSISTED we open up a bunch of old plastic easter eggs saved over the years for who knows what reason. Yep! Money galore! All leftover from years of easter egg hunts.
OMG I love these! When the kids were growing up, I’d throw a big Easter egg hunt in our yard for them and some of their friends. Candy in all of the eggs - and I had plastic eggs of all kinds! Several hundred eggs each year.
And then I’d have a dozen larger “prize” eggs that would have a number inside. Once they were done, we made sure each kid got at least one prize egg. If someone had multiple, they had to give one to someone else. Inside there were numbers and that was the order that they could select the prizes set up on our dining room table - usually a combo of big chocolate bunnies/Easter candy and cheap dollar store like gifts. It was so much fun!
Once they got older, I stopped inviting the friends, but my kids still did it. If they were ever both here for Easter, I’m sure they still would do it. I miss it so much
Our forever Easter game tradition is what we call “Uppers and Lowers”, but is otherwise called Egg Tapping or Egg Jarping; in Greek it is called Tsougrisma, which means “clinking together” or “clashing”. We make time to dye hard-boiled eggs as a family (even if it is just H and I), and then at our Easter meal we play the game around the table - each person chooses one of the dyed eggs. 2 people take turns tapping - one person holds their egg firmly in their hand, with only the tip showing. This is the “lower” position. The other person has the upper position - they also hold the egg the same way, but hovering over the other person’s egg. Then they tap/smash the other egg with their egg. One shell will crack and one will not. Whoever holds the unbroken egg moves on to the next person around the table, and chooses if they want to be in the upper or lower position (upper always preferred - not because it usually wins, but it’s just more fun to be the smasher!) Play continues around the table, and players are out of the game once both ends of their egg have been cracked.
I always thought this was just a game our family made up, until my MIL found an article in the paper about it! If you google Tsougrisma you can learn about the interesting Greek version of the game, which has more Easter meaning to it (they use red dyed eggs, to represent the blood of Christ, and the tapping of the shell represents the Resurrection/new birth.) My mom’s best friend in her early adult years was from Greece, so perhaps this is where we acquired our tradition - unfortunately Mom and Dad passed away without me ever thinking to ask them about it!
So are you holding the eggs directly across from each other in a horizontal position? Then do you say “go”? I bet this would be fun with the siblings in each family. So the cracked egg is eaten, after both sides get cracked.
We hold the eggs vertically, hence upper and lowers - one person has the bottom hand and the other has the top hand, which is the “smasher” egg. Person with the bottom egg holds theirs still. Other versions may be more as you described - horizontally, both holders smashing at the same time. There is a lot of family rivalry when we play, siblings beating siblings, grandma beating everyone, etc. Lots of laughs, and newcomers to our Easter tradition always love it! We put all the cracked eggs in the fridge and use them to make Easter egg salad for the next day.
I’ve seen several games on FB, one is having a bunch of plastic eggs (or marshmallows) on a table and a blindfolded kid trying to scoop them into a pan with a spatula. Or bouncing ping pong ball into solo cups with prizes inside- one being a raw egg that gets cracked on the recipient’s head…
I will have 4, ages 21-24, and we are doing an Easter Egg Hunt. All of the eggs are numbered, 1-48, and each person stops at finding 12 eggs. Then, I have a list from 1-48 of things like Add $1, Subtract $.50, Trade amounts with the person who has the least, give $1 to the person on your left, etc. Everyone will keep track on their phone calculator as we go and receive their winnings at the end. The person I got it from said they sometimes end up negative and pay their mom, but I tried to set it up so that won’t happen and ran several scenarios to see what kind of money I might be paying out
I don’t know if this counts as a game, and it’s a bit of an investment on your part but my SIL did this at Christmas and it was really fun. She had a poster board with solo cups taped to it, hanging on the wall. The cups had a piece of paper inside with a number that corresponded to a prize, or a dollar or a fiver. The open part of the cup was covered with a tissue paper and we had to pick a cup and punch it open.
The cups formed the shape of a Christmas tree - but I suppose you could make the cups in an egg or bunny face/ears shape? It was a really fun, loose way to pass the time. She is a teacher so she had a big basket of chotchkes - I think teacher xmas gifts from over the years. It wasn’t really about what we won, it was honestly…just kind of fun to punch the cups?!!
And any normal game can be an Easter event. My son is a middle school math teacher and today, the last day before break , his classes are having an Uno tournament!
Along those lines I got our house a new game for Christmas called Ransom Notes. You have to make a sentence with magnets to answer the prompt. Pretty funny.
and so now I am in charge of the wrapping. It’s super silly, but a tradition I know my kids will carry on!
and ran several scenarios to see what kind of money I might be paying out 