Good Afternoon! Welcome to my family game night roundup! After sharing snippets from our big family game night last weekend on IG stories, I have gotten soooooo many requests for a very thorough explanation of everything we do at our annual game night.

Quite a few years ago I started a family game night tradition. It’s a Christmas tradition but with mixed custody schedules and busy kiddos, it has fallen anywhere between Thanksgiving week to sometime in January each year. And of course you can truly host this exact game night any time of year… I just love doing it over the Holidays with a little extra Christmas flair!

For the last few years, we have done most of what I am sharing below and then last year we added the Left/Right/Center game and this year we added Squid Games and Family Feud (we played this one the following night at our Framily Christmas Party). So this post will be a photo mix of games played over the years…

This Year’s Matching Christmas Shirts

Although the overall gist of this post is family game ideas, I wanted to include a little about our entire Holiday week to maybe give you some fun ideas for next year! This part is what I did LAST YEAR…

At the start of the week, I gave each kiddo a cute little itinerary I made on Canva along with their matching pj’s, gingerbread houses I got at World Market that I felt fit each of their personalities and then slippers for the boys and cozy socks for the girls…

Slippers / PJ’s

Now, let’s chat games! I started this tradition a few years back as a way to kind of marry my favorite childhood Christmas memories of playing games over the Holidays with the desire to bring together our newly blended family and do something fun… a little Holiday bonding… such as wrapping one another with toilet paper and racing yams down the hallway.

Now that we have FOUR teenagers, I am always interested to see how “into it” they are each year as they get older BUT this year… they wanted to keep going and going and going… and we ended up playing for six hours!!! I will say that lots of cash prizes and gift cards do help… HA! But it was by far our BEST YEAR YET. Here’s a detailed list of everything we played…

Quick Links to All the Game Supplies You’ll Need (Minus Prizes)…

Deal or No Deal…

How to Assemble… Label a “surface”… I used this standing whiteboard… with numbers 1-24. Attach an envelope, each with a gift (cash, gift card, etc.), under each number in a way that can be easily moved around after each round. I used a single piece of tape across the top of each envelope flap.

How to Play… Each player starts the round by choosing one numbered envelope as “their case”. Remove that envelope and set it aside without the player knowing what’s inside. We then gave each player five chances to select a numbered envelope and decide if they wanted to “make a deal” and keep what was inside or “no deal” and give that one up to select another envelope. If all five selections are deemed as “no deal”, the player then wins whatever is in their original “case” or envelope.

Once one player has gone, John and I then roll the board into another room and add one more gift (cash or gift card) into the now empty envelope, swap a few others around to mix things up and then the next player goes!

What You Need… A Display Surface (like a whiteboard), 24 Envelopes & 24 Gifts (cash or gift cards)

Standing Whiteboard

Saran Wrap Gift Ball…

How to Assemble… Using 200-300 square feet of saran wrap, start by choosing one center gift (I usually do $20 cash in a small box) and begin wrapping with Saran wrap. Continue wrapping and adding gifts as you begin to create a ball. To make it challenging, every so often cut the Saran wrap and start a new piece so that it won’t unwrap for someone in one continuous roll. We cut about every 8-10 items.

How to Play… Hand the large ball to one player and set a timer for 30 seconds, once the time begins the player must find the start to the Saran wrap (without cutting or ripping the wrap) and unroll as much as they can in under 30 seconds as the gifts fall out as they go. Everything that falls out of the ball during their turn wins those gifts.

What You Need… One Box of Saran Wrap & Lots of Little Gifts (we also do cash like $1’s and $5’s as well as small gift cards)

The pictures below are from last year… this year I found red Saran wrap!

Minute to Win It Games…

Our biggest and by far funniest part of game night is always Minute to Win It! For this, I prepare 8-10 games… this year a few more… and we keep score on the other side of our big whiteboard I shared earlier. It’s every person for themselves and for each game, it’s either whoever successfully completes “the task” within one minute gets a point or whoever does “the most” or something like that gets a point… it’s detailed for each game below! And then at the end, we add up scores and I do cash prizes for 1st place, 2nd place and so on.

Candy Cane Fishing

How to Play… Lay out a bunch of candy canes as well as a small bowl on a flat surface. Player must then transfer as many candy canes as they can in one minute into the bowl by scooping up candy canes with a candy cane in their mouth.

What You Need… Lots of Candy Canes and a Small Bowl

Traffic Yam

How to Play… A player must roll a yam a distance of around 30′ using only their nose! For us, our kids must make it from one end of our hallway to the other across the hardwood/tile line in our hallway which is 33′!

What You Need… A Yam!

Christmas Ball

How to Play… A player must move a round ornament across the floor and into a target area by fanning the ornament using only the wind of a gift box. Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in under one minute!

What You Need… One Large Gift Box & One Round Ornament

Snowball Scoop

How to Play… Fill one bowl with nine cotton balls. Players must transfer all of the cotton balls from one bowl at one end of a table to another bowl at the other end of the table using only a plastic spoon in their mouth. Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in under one minute!

What You Need… Two Bowls, Cotton Balls & One Plastic Spoon

Snowball Fight

How to Play… One player stands at the end of a table with other players at the other end. Place a bowl at the end of the table opposite the player and give the other players a bunch of cotton balls. The player must try and bounced one ping pong bowl into the bowl while the other players try and knock the ping pong ball of course by throwing cotton balls. off the podiums with the ping pong balls. Points go to all players who successfully get one ping pong bowl into the bowl in under one minute!

What You Need… One Small Bowl, Several Ping Pong Balls & Lots of Cotton Balls

Cookie Face

How to Play… Player places a cookie (we used Oreos) on their forehead and must then get the cookie into their mouth using only your facial muscles – no hands allowed! Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in under one minute!

What You Need… Cookies!

Defying Gravity

How to Play… Give each player three balloons. Player must keep all three balloons up in the air for a minute. Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in one minute!

What You Need… Three Balloons

Paper Dragon

How to Play… Each player must unspool one streamer roll with one hand behind their back only using the hand holding the spool. If the streamer breaks, you have to pick it up and carry on unspooling. Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in under one minute!

What You Need… Rolls of Streamers

Christmas Tree Stack

How to Play… Players must stack up a pile of 28 cups and then place them back into a single stack in under a minute. Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in under one minute!

What You Need… 28 Solo Cups

Christmas Cliffhanger

How to Play… Place one greeting card standing upright in the center of a small table. Without touching the card, the player must blow the card so that one side of the card hangs over the edge of the table without it falling off. Points go to all players who successfully complete the challenge in under one minute!

What You Need… One Greeting Card

White Christmas

How to Play… One person stands still while the other wraps them in toilet paper… or this year we did a roll of red party streamers. This game is best player head to head against another two player team. Points go to the player that successfully unrolls and wraps more of the toilet paper roll around their teammate than the other player without any of it falling to the floor in one minute! It paper falls to the floor it also must be wrapped around the teammate.

What You Need… Several Rolls of Toilet Paper OR Party Streamers

Squid Games

This year we added Squid Games! And it was a HUGE HIT!!! I even made Squid Games shirts for them too…

Shirts / Green Iron On Numbers

For their shirts, I purchased THESE SHIRTS on Amazon as well as THESE IRON ON NUMBERS and made all their Squid Games shirts. They were SO easy and turned out so cute!

Shirts / Green Iron On Numbers / Ankle Straps

And then you’ll need ANKLE STRAPS and of course the SQUID GAMES SET!

How to Play… We separated our seven kiddos (and friends) into two teams… and Winnie played both teams to make it four against four. You could also just have one team and then have a time limit to beat instead of having one team trying to complete faster than the other.

In the Squid Games set, there are six games. We chose four… Jebi Kicks (Korean Hacky Sack), Biseokchigi (Rocks), DDAKJI (Tile Flip) and .

Jebi Kicks (Korean Hacky Sack) : To complete this game, the player must kick ‘Jebi’ in the air without dropping it three times in a row.

Biseokchigi : To complete this game, the player must knock over the small gray tombstone from 12′ away using the included rock. If the player misses, the entire team must walk together to retrieve the rock, come back to the starting point and try again.

DDAKJI : It’s involves two playing tiles of different colors. The point of the game is to flip over one tile by hitting it with the other tile from above. As easy as the rules are, it’s actually quite a challenging game that takes a lot more skill than you would think!

House of Cards- To complete this game, player (and team all attached at the ankles) must advance forward 12′ to the marked line and chosen player must stack two pairs of cards in a triangle and bridge the fifth card across the top.

Each team got a quick overview of how each game is played and then they had a few minutes to decide who would complete each game. With ankles tied together, they then had to complete one game per person. The catch is that their ankles are tied together so for example with the “rocks” game, the entire team must retrieve the rock every time the tombstone is missed.

The team to complete all four games the fastest WINS!

What You Need… Ankle Straps, Squid Game Set, T-Shirts and Iron On Numbers

Ankle Straps / Squid Game Set / T-Shirts / Iron On Numbers

Left Right Center

How to Play… For this game, my mom found a cute wooden Left/Right/Center gift dice at Target but I am linking one HERE on Amazon as well! To play, each player starts with one $5 gift (cash, gift card or gift). One player rolls the dice. If it says PASS RIGHT or PASS LEFT, only that player passes their gift right or left. That would leave that player with no gift and the other player with two! The dice then goes to the next person, if it reads KEEP YOUR GIFT, nothing happens and the dice goes to the next person. If it reads EVERYONE PASS LEFT (OR RIGHT), everyone passes everything in their hands left or right. If it reads “STEAL”, you can steal everything in another person’s hands. If someone is without a gift during a round, they cannot roll. Once one person has every gift in their hand, they win everything! There are LOTS of different ways to play this one but this is how we have always played!

What You Need… Left/Right/Center Dice and a $5 (or whatever amount you decide) Gift Per Person

Left/Right/Center Dice

Family Feud

This year we also added Family Feud! We actually played this the following night during our Framily Christmas party and it was SO MUCH FUN! I even ordered Christmas medals LINKED HERE for the winners. Ha!

How to Play… I think everyone knows how to play the Feud! But to explain HOW we did it, I purchased THIS FAMILY FEUD DOWNLOAD that we then ran it through PowerPoint and cast it onto our projector. You can also cast it onto a TV as well!

What You Need… Family Feud Download and Buzzers