DIY Family Game You Can Play At Home

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Here’s a fun DIY family game you can play at home tonight. Try something different (but easy!) this time.

When screen time has caused quite enough fights for one week, thankyouverymuch, it’s time for something completely different.

After being stuck at home for a week, I wanted to try something a little different with the kids.

Something to make Family Fun Night different from every other night that we’ve been stuck at home.

And I think we came up with something pretty fun.  Also totally easy.  That you can DIY at home, even if you stink at being crafty or creative.  

The DIY Family Game You Can Play At Home

This family fun night was a hodge podge of games cobbled together to create a fun night.

Scavenger Hunt

We started the game off by calling everyone to the living room and handing out a list.

It was a time for a good old fashioned scavenger hunt.

Since everyone who was playing can read, that made it easy.  But you can also do this by printing out pictures of objects for them to find.

On this list, there were things like “something you can wear on your head” and “one shoe without laces”.  Keep it interesting.  😉

When they returned with everything on their list, I told them to use those materials to create a costume for themselves!

Name

Next up…each person needed a name.

I wanted them to be creative, so I wrote up a list of different name suggestions for them to choose from.

By the end, they had fun names like Lou Decruss, Master of the Pachyderms.  And Holly Wood, Director of the Hillbillies.

Stuff like that.

(If you don’t have the time or inclination to create a list of names, don’t worry.  I created a printable packet of everything we did and you can grab yours for just 99 cents here!)

Flag

Every person with a title so fancy as that needs their own personal flag.  Right?

So I printed off a flag for each of them.

Then I told them to decorate it…

the only rule was that they weren’t allowed to use traditional art tools like crayons, pencils, pens, markers, etc.

Time to get creative, kids!

I will warn you that if they get out the ketchup, you need to make a rule that they have to squirt a little on their fingers and fingerpaint with it.  Otherwise, you’re going to have really gloopy flags covered in ketchup.

sigh

The Fortress

Time to build your fortress!

(Warning…do not accidentally call this a tower.  The kids will take that as a challenge.)

Encourage them to use things like books, canned goods…

maybe a huge supply of toilet paper??  (I’m not judging.)

Get creative!  You can hang your flag on the wall when it’s done.

Decorate It

Why not pull out some Christmas lights and deck the wall?

Or maybe different holiday decorations…

Whatever you have on hand.

Sadly, our lights all look like this, so we skipped that part.  🙁

via GIPHY

More Fun

Next I asked each kid to choose a challenge for their fort. 

They’d visit each other’s forts and do each challenge.

These could be things like asking people to make a tower out of cards.  Or, like one of my kids chose, see how long you can go without moving or making a sound.

This went ok.  I think it would have been better to just have a list of challenges and announce each person by their fancy name to come up and complete the challenge.

Then you could have a leaderboard and see who wins.

OR, if you know that’s just gonna end in more fighting, you could just do it for fun.

Another Option

If you have a lot of boys, they would love to stay in their forts and have a “battle”.

Nerf guns work great, of course.

Or have them wad up your junk mail and scrap paper into balls and have an indoor “snowball fight”.

The Good Stuff

Don’t forget to put out some junk food and drinks!

You could make this part of it and ask the kids to create a “trail mix” out of whatever you have on hand.  (Cereal, nuts, sweet stuff, whatever.)

Or make it super easy and pull out that bag of chips you had hidden.  That was enough to make my kids happy.

DIY It All…Or Not

You can put all of this together yourself, especially if you and your kids have a good creativity gene.

Or you can take it easy (for once) and grab these printables.  You’ll get a packet to print out (that will take it easy on your ink) so you’re ready to go.

At just .99, it makes your fun night a cinch.

That’s one way to have a super fun DIY family night!

By the way, the Minecraft song will eventually get out of your head.  😉

Grab your easy family fun night packet right here for just 99 cents.