Right now is basically prime time for board games, card games, and semi-competitive indoor entertainment of all kinds! Here are our favourite games to play as a family.
We’re all looking for ways to keep ourselves sane, happy, and entertained while staying home and social distancing. You can only binge on Netflix for so long before it starts to get old and the weather here at this time of year isn’t very consistently nice yet, so we’ve found ourselves looking for things to do indoors. I have to admit that I love the idea of spending an entire day doing nothing but reading, but (believe it or not) that idea doesn’t really appeal all that much to our kids. Ha. One day they’ll get it. 🙂 We’re lucky that with a 15-year-old and a six-year-old, there are quite a few games that we can now play together and and actually find really fun, even with all different skill levels. I thought I’d share a few of our favourites today to maybe provide a few new ideas if you’re feeling like your previous entertainment methods are getting old.
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Indoor Games to Play as a Family
Hands down our favourite. We just taught Jack to play about a month ago and he’s always up for it so far. This was my favourite as a kid, so I’m pretty pleased with this development.
War
The simplest card game ever and a great one for even younger kids, as long as they know their numbers. All you need is a basic deck of cards!
Go Fish
Kennedy and I just taught this to Jack last week. It’s a classic. You can’t go wrong. The hardest part for him is learning how to hold his cards comfortably. 🙂
This game has such a magical quality to it for kids when it actually works, but of course it doesn’t always and that can be frustrating for younger kids who are so excited to see everything come together. Once kids are about five or six they seem to have the patience for it to be really enjoyable for everyone.
This game kind of feels like competitive Tetris. We played it at Christmas with our nine-year-old niece, then she asked for it for her birthday. So good.
Hilarious and super simple even for very young kids.
Yup, this game exists. We were gifted this a few years ago and while it’s definitely a little more on the complicated side, and Jack mostly gets bored and wanders off, the rest of us have a lot of fun with it. We played this a lot over the Christmas break, but haven’t played it since the whole actual Pandemic thing started because it just didn’t seem quite right. It’s a great game though. Play it with your grandkids in thirty years and tell them about the real pandemic “back in the day”.
DIY Games
We’ve shared a few ideas for DIY games over the past couple of weeks as well. If you missed those, check out how we turned our kitchen table into a DIY ping pong table, and the scarf game.
Outdoor Games to Play as a Family
The outdoor game situation can be the same as the indoor one with family where it can be challenging to find something that works for all different skill levels. Here are a few that have worked well for us so far though! Hopefully we’ll add some new favourites this year as the weather warms up.
My current favourite. Well, all lawn games are my favourite, but this one always seems to result in a good time had by all.
You don’t even need to follow the rules. We all love croquet in this house. It’s just satisfying to hit the ball through the wickets with the mallet. 🙂
We recently got some little lacrosse sticks from the Easter bunny as kind of an upgrade on this concept, but the scoops are still a little more reasonable for our current skill level.
What games has your family been loving lately?
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.