Sometimes I see those families who go camping on weekends, or do bush walks once a month, or who plan elaborate family movie nights with themed food and activities, and I wish that was us, but it’s not us.
We have four kids ranging in age from six to thirteen, each with their individual likes and dislikes. My husband works a ridiculous rotating shift, and I try to cram in working from home any way I can.
I know spending time together as a family is important, I know it’s worth the effort, it’s just not always easy to find big blocks of time, or come up with something that everyone can do and enjoy.
Even if the stars align and I attempt to plan the perfect family outing, often someone will roll their eyes, or screw up their nose, and ‘team family time’ becomes ‘whining kids and frustrated parent time’.
But just because we are not a weekly-bushwalk-followed-by-a-family-date-night kind of family doesn’t mean our team doesn’t spend time together. It just means we jump in with fun, silly, quick and easy ideas whenever we find a snippet of time.
Right now our favourite quick and easy family game is the very silly ‘What Am I?’ game.
‘What Am I?’ is a cross between celebrity head and twenty questions.
It doesn’t take long to play, so it’s perfect for when you only have a little bit of time but you want to put it to good use with your team. We often play while we are eating dinner!
It’s portable, (great for when you are waiting or travelling) it’s easy enough for little ones to play (with some help) and fun enough to keep older kids engaged. You can be as silly or as serious as you like, and all you need is a scrap of paper and a pen – or our free printable ‘What Am I?’
Playing the What Am I? game is easy! All you need is a set of our printable What Am I? game cards (see below to download the free printable), and 2 or more people to play!
Each player chooses a card and holds it up against their forehead, or props it up in front of them, without looking at it, but so that the other players can see it.
Each player now takes turns to ask yes or no questions to try to find out what they are.
The rest of the players answer the questions until someone is finally able to guess who or what they are. The first person to guess correctly is the winner!
These free printable ‘What am I?’ cards have either an animal, a person, a place, or a thing, on them. There is also lots of blank cards so you can add your own ideas.
For little kids, try to stick to things they know really well – people in their family, things they can see where they are etc. For older kids try a few tricker ideas like characters from movies, or places they have never been but would like to go to.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. It will fit to print on US ‘letter sized’ paper, just be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options to allow for printer margins.
The What Am I? game is a pretty simple game, nothing fancy, but it’s something we can do as a family, without a huge amount of time or effort, and it makes us laugh. The other day we were all crying with laughter because Dad just couldn’t figure out that he was a dog, and it’s the little moments like these that go down in our family history, that become stories that get told over and over again, that become the threads that tie us together as a team.
What’s your favourite easy and fun family game or activity? leave a comment and share your favourite, easy, family game or activity, or check out one of the fun family activity ideas below.
