How to Reinvent Old Drinking Games and Turn Them Into Kids’ Games for the Whole Family
Winter has come and the parents are preparing for the inevitable bouts of home fever. Before you get bogged down in yet another round of Candy Land, think outside of the family game. We may receive a few angry emails about this, but some of the classic drinking games you played in college – no booze – can be great games for kids. Think about it. Their beauty lies in their sheer simplicity and their ability to captivate the crowd with their rapidly dwindling attention span. This also applies to kindergartens and the guy who had too many Natty Lights.
To make these games kid-friendly, you can’t just replace the liquor with water, juice or something else, because that would mean they are still drinking games and we don’t want kids to play drinking games. Instead, you must take the basic premise of the game, invent new family rules, and do a complete rebranding. Who knows? Playing these reimagined games with your kids can be almost as much fun as when you and your friends gather around red Solo cups in your tiny apartment, but without the killing hangover.
Here are some games to try:
Surprise per power hour or weekend dance per power hour
Based on: Power Hour
How to play: Power Hour is a game where you make a shot of beer every minute for an hour and is a really bad idea. To play Power Hour Surprise, jot down a bunch of silly tasks on pieces of paper (for example, Pretend to be an opera singer, Tell a Creepy Story, Laugh Like a Hyena), drop them in a bowl, and set a timer for one minute. The first player chooses a task at random and completes it until the timer stops. The timer then restarts with the next player. Continue playing until all tasks have been selected.
You can also try Power Hour Dance-Off, during which you simply throw a big dance party to songs that change every minute. There is an app that can do all the work for you with your iTunes playlist. It even has sound effects so you know when the next song is out.
Cabbage and kings
Inspired by : Asshole
How to Play: Dan Cois wrote about this reinvented game for The New York Times Magazine , explaining that when the classic drinking game is removed from its original habitat, “it becomes magically a perfect game built to the right level for a 9 year old and an 11-year-old boy and their desperate parents. ” Why? “Its rules are easier to understand than the rules of hearts, euchra, or other adult foods,” Kois writes. “But his strategy is more complex than grueling childhood standards like crazy eights, speed, or (shudder) war.”
If you are not familiar with the asshole, also known as the king or the president, you deal all the cards and the players try to get rid of their cards first . This player becomes the King and can force any other player to drink in the next round. The last player to get rid of their cards becomes the Asshole. But in the children’s version, the losing player becomes Cabbage. And there is no drinking.
Fun pong
Inspired by: Beer Pong
How to play: Fun Pong can be played just like Beer Pong, with a classic cup setting (you can fill them with water for added stability, but no one has to drink them), or you canindulge in all kinds of trick madness like this kid …
Straight face
Based on: Straight Face
How to play: Children need to be able to read for this. Everyone writes on a piece of paper the most outrageous G-rated sentence they can think of and tosses it into a bowl. In turn, the players select a piece of paper and read it aloud, trying to remain calm. Any reader who smiles or giggles is out.
Get creative with your own games. On the other hand, if you don’t have kids, BuzzFeed has a list of kids’ games that are better than drinking games .