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For this festive season Very.co.uk asked me to pick a range of activities and games that are fun for all the family, and I think I’ve found a really good selection.
Family games are one of life’s great pleasures, and now my youngest has stopped throwing a hissy fit (well, mostly!) when he loses they’re even more fun to play and we can have whole evenings dedicated to screen free fun! Of course having fun is the most important part, but it’s nice when games teach us things, or improve our skills in something too.
Don’t Get Rattled and Screwball Scramble 2 are both hands on games that can be played fairly quickly, with minimal set up and neither has any convoluted rules so they are great for filling in those shorter gaps whilst you’re waiting to go out to see Christmas lights, or if the kids finish their dinner way before the adults. Don’t Get Rattled is a skill game where each player has to try and pick up their gems with a shovel before the rattlesnake bites! No batteries required and no noisy bleeps or music! Screwball Scramble 2 is a newer version of the classic that we all know and love, and spent our own childhood playing! Use the controls to guide the ball up and around the obstacle course, without it falling off! If you do have the original game then you can actually connect it to this one with the connector piece provided, for double fun! This can be played alone or you can set a timer for each person and see who can race round the track the fastest!
If your children are anything like mine then they LOVE to put on a ‘show’, even more so if we have guests – a ready made captive audience, hurrah! This year will be no shortage of audience members as we have friends over on both Christmas Eve New and Years Eve, plus family staying over Christmas. This year they can really ramp up their at-home productions with the addition of a RockJam Party Karaoke machine, which comes with two microphones, a built in light show and a variety of voice effect modes. To say it’s a hit is an understatement as we are being serenaded with songs, jokes, pretend weather forecasts and all sorts of other announcements! They’ve discovered that you can search for Karaoke versions of their favourite songs on YouTube so they can sing along to them (at top whack, given the choice!) with a Disco 360 Ice light that changes colour to the beat of their music – our living room is like a nightclub some evenings!
Finally, a game that is probably more for the grown ups although you could team kids up with adults and create teams, is Trivial Pursuit Decades 2010-2020, which is a little easier to play than the original version, providing you’ve paid attention to the news, entertainment and popular media in the past decade or so! We’ll definitely be playing a few games of this on New Years Eve with friends, once we’ve watched the kids’ show of course!
What are your favourite games to play as a family? Check out the huge selection at Very.co.uk to see if you can find a new family favourite to play year after year!