friday five: games!

At RevGals Jan writes:

In less than three weeks, my family, including children and their partners, will be gathering in Seattle, WA for 12 days. After various days in Seattle sightseeing and in Bellingham seeing family, we will travel to the coast of Washington State to spend three nights in a large rented house. With nine adults (from almost 20 years old and up), I am thinking that we need to have some activities pre-planned--like GAMES! (Any ideas will be appreciated.)

So this Friday Five is about games, so play on ahead. . . .

My family has a handful of “game” traditions. We tend to play when we’re on vacation, but not generally otherwise. At Thanksgiving we play charades (we’ve never been followers of sports on holidays).

1. Childhood games?
When there were enough kids to play, duck-duck-goose was always a favorite, as was kick-ball/dodge-ball and any form of hide-and-go-seek.

2. Favorite and/or most hated board games?
I enjoy scrabble (I’m a word person), and in younger days, Candyland and Sorry were favorites, then as I got a bit older I enjoyed The Game of Life. When I visited my grandparents my grandfather and I played a board game that was a race track, and race horses were the pieces. We loved to play that game together (can’t think of the name of it at all). The game also included opportunities to bet on your horse (I learned then about win, place and show), though racing and gambling were not something in which anyone in my family was interested.

I’m not a big fan of monopoly. It can get very competitive and bring out a nasty side in people.

3. Card games?
My family had a staple favorite: Flinch. It uses a specially made deck of cards and few people seem to know about it. We also play multiple-hand solitaire. I also like Uno.

4. Travel/car games?
We traveled a lot in the car, but I don’t remember a lot of games (this says more about my memory than the games!). There was the usual license plate game, to see how many states we could spot, and the alphabet game using billboards and signs. That’s all I can come up with at the moment. One year while driving to Cape Cod I asked my dad how the Vietnam War started, and for the next hour and a half he told me!

5. Adult pastimes that are not video games?
Jigsaw puzzles! This is a great activity for rainy days or for those who, well, like puzzles! It can be left out over a period of days and can be worked on here and there. It also works well for multiple generations. I also love to play dictionary (pick a word from the dictionary that no one knows, the person who is “it” writes down the real definition, everybody else makes up a definition, then all are gathered by the person who is it and reads them aloud, and everyone votes on which they think is the real definition. This can get absolutely hysterical if you’ve got some clever people in the group!)

Bonus: Any ideas for family vacations or gatherings?
For a group activity, dialogue drawings. You need a table, drawing paper and either crayons or pastels. Each person begins with a blank piece of paper and draws something on it. You don’t spend a lot of time, maybe five minutes. Then the paper gets passed to the left (or the right, doesn’t matter). Everyone adds to the drawing passed to them, then after five minutes, they get passed again. Repeat until your first page returns to you. It’s absolutely amazing what gets created, and how different each drawing is. Some wonderful conversation can get generated in response to the results.

For those who may not always enjoy group things, crossword puzzle and sudodu books are useful.