Games

Individual Games

  1. Board Games: Dominoes, Connect 4, Guess Who, Triominoes, Boggle, Scrabble, Snakes and Ladders, Jenga.
  2. Bingo
  3. Beetle Drive Beetle Drive Score Sheet
  4. World Cup Challenge: Table football, everyone represents a country, with knock out rounds [Knock Out Tournament Chart], 2 min games. Decorations flags. If you don’t have a table football you could use blow football with small light weight balls and  straws. You could do this as the European Cup challenge too.
  5. Olympics: Every 4 years you can change the sports day to the Olympics. Prizes can be gold medals, supermarkets sell these as birthday favours for children. It can be made more atmospheric with flags. Ebay sell Olympic flags.
  6. Indoor sports day: Guests visit each game in turn. Usually 6 to 7 games. Scores recorded on a piece of paper at each game. Winners announced at the end. If the games can be manned by volunteers all the better, if students are around, they may be willing to come and help for this session. Suggestions of games:
  • Sprint race. Use clockwork grannies on walking frames (can be purchased on amazon) race on a smooth surface table 18” long track. Either winner stays on or best time wins.
  • Bean bag toss. Throw bean bags onto a target or into containers with scores on. Highest score is winner.
  • Darts. Magnetic ones are safest in a busy room. Highest score wins.
  • Skittles. Either table top ones or floor ones. Highest score wins.
  • Wii. Appropriate running, swimming, or car race can be used. Best time wins.
  • Marble roll. 10 Marbles rolled across a table aiming to go through numbered arches. You can make these out of shoeboxes or buy ready made ones. Highest score wins.
  • Quoits. Highest score wins.
  • Netball/basket ball hoop. 5 shots. Highest score wins.
  • Snooker. How many balls can be potted in 1 min.
  • String Thing. Loop a length of string (8′) around the back of a chair hold the 2 ends of the string about 4′ from the chair. A bucket is placed just in front of the chair. Roll a table tennis ball down the string and open the strings as it goes over the bucket, score a point if the ball goes in the bucket.
  • Tin Can Alley. Remove labels and wash 6 cans, cover in brightly coloured paper. Stack 3,2,1, on a table use soft balls or bean bags to knock them down. Highest total from 2 stacks wins.

[All throwing games mark the position to stand to throw, masking tape is useful for this.]

Team Games

  1. Hockey. This is great fun and a favourite. Players seated in 2 teams facing each other about 3′ apart. In thegap at each end place a chair, this becomes the goal. Provide each team member with a 0.5m length of insulating pipe lagging (available at B&Q) as their hockey stick. This material is soft and won’t do as much damage if it catches frail skin. Use a small 6″ diameter plastic ball. One team shoot in one direction and scores if it goes through the chair legs and the other team try to stop them trying to score through the opposite chair leg. The referee releases the ball in the centre of both teams to start. [Players can become very competitive so be warned! If you have guests who easily get breathless they may only wish to play for a few minutes.]

    Insulation pipe hockey
  2. Volleyball. Players seated in 2 teams facing each other about 4′ apart. The idea is to pat a balloon over the heads of the opposing team, if it is unreachable, behind the team, the team facing it scores a point. The referee should throw the balloon in the air to restart,trying not to favour either team. It is a good idea to have an agile helper behind each team to retrieve the balloon and be ready to catch a chair to prevent from tipping backwards if the team member gets too involved. We had a 90+ year old gentleman who regularly did this as he tried to reach the balloon to stop the other team scoring!

    Balloon volleyball
  3. Snow Much Fun. An afternoon of snow themed games for January. Suggest using 4 of these games:
  • Tower building with ice bricks. Each team has 10 marshmallows and 1 minute to build the highest tower.  The highest number of marshmallows, wins.
  • Build a snowman. Each team has 2 toilet rolls, a scarf, a hat and a nose (cone of orange paper threaded with wool, to wrap and dress one of their members as a snowman. The most complete snowman wins.
  • Snowball fight. Indoor snowballs can be purchased or newspaper tightly squashed into balls. Each team has a bucket, equally distribute the snowballs between them. 1 minute for the teams to try to fill each other’s bucket with snowballs. They can throw ones from their bucket but when the final whistle goes the snowballs in their buckets are counted. The team with the least amount in wins.
  • Snow mound. Make a snow mound on a plate from flour compressed in a small bowl. A 3lb bag of flour will do 6 mounds. Place a penny or sweet on top, each member of the team cut a slice off the mound in turn until their mound collapses and the penny/sweet drops. The winning team is the last one standing.
  • Snow shovel. Each team have a mound of snow, i.e. cotton wool balls and a shovel ie teaspoon. They have 1 minute to shovel the snow in turn 1 cotton wool ball at a time only using their spoon from one side of the table to the other.