Every family has their designated couch potato or modern day hermit. But spending time together for family bonding shows that you care about each other.
We all go through hardships together, but it is the people we stay with that will be most affected by your moods and behaviour. Building and maintaining the strength of your relationships with your loved ones is key to having a healthy social life.
Play these indoor games for a compromise in lifestyles!
(image credit: canva.com)
1. Charades
A classic family game. This is a game where it encourages themes of friendly competition and cooperation all while verbal communication is restricted. After all, there’s more to communication than just talking it out.
This is especially great for families where there are people with speech impediments like stutters and stammers, most like children.
How to Play
Firstly, you need to decide on a theme and prepare a list of examples under that theme. For example: Theme: Animals, Examples: Cat, Dog, Monkey… etc. The number of examples in your list depends on how many people are playing, but try to write down as many as possible.
While any number of people can play this game, try to sort yourselves into groups as evenly as possible. It’s okay if your family group is of odd numbers, after all judges play an important role as well!
(image credit: pixabay.com)
Once everyone is grouped up and they are informed of the theme of the day, you’re ready to play. The rules are as below;
One person from one group is selected to be the representative.
They must randomly select from the pre-prepared list and act it out for their team member so guess what it is.
They must only mime it out to the best of their ability until someone in their team says the correct answer or both sides agree to give up before they can move on to randomly selecting another example.
This goes on until the length of the timer (as agreed upon beforehand) runs out. Another team will take their place and the cycle repeats until everyone has had a turn.
The judge and/or other team members keeps score of how many were guessed correctly. The team with the highest score wins.
2. Mad libs
This is a game where you need a minimum of 2 people to play. It is a word game that lets you and your family practice their language skills in a fun way.
How to Play
It starts out with a paragraph or short story that’s littered with gaps in the sentences. These gaps are filled with word indicators like (adjective) or (pronoun). You can either make your own or use an online mad lib generator.
One person will ask for these words from the others and fill in the blanks without giving them any context clues as to what kind of sentence they are filling in.
When all the gaps in the sentences are filled in, you and your family can read the whole story out loud.
(image credit: Aaron & Alli [Flickr.com])
It’s a simple game of writing a ridiculous story together in a way that still makes grammatical sense. Children will especially love this game and it’s god for their developing language skills as well!
3. Video games
This entry might seem a bit predictable but it is honestly a really good way to engage with your kids. One of the key steps in effective communication is to have a common ground that both parties can talk about.
(image credit: canva.com)
As many kids these days love playing video games, it shouldn’t be hard to use this as a basis for family bonding times. A little light hearted rivalry or cooperatively figuring out solutions together are exactly the ways for you to build a rapport with them.
Try some games like;
- Gangbeasts
- Overcooked
- Jack in the box
- Portal 2: Cooperative Campaign
4. Board Games & Card Games
Another classic family gathering activity is boardgames. The more infuriating the better!
Traditional games like Life, Monopoly and Uno are sure to bring out strong feelings because they are games people love to hate and love to win in equal measures. There are so many different kinds of board games that there’s sure to be a kind that will fit for your family.
If your family is all grown up, there are plenty of adult oriented games as well, and not the naughty kind!
(image credit: canva.com)
However, some board games can be a touch expensive, especially if you try them out and discover that you don’t really like them. That’s okay though!
They’re not that well known, but there are actually quite a few board game cafes around where you can pay a small fee and play as many games as you want for an allotted time.
5. Tabletop RPGs
While some board games and card games can get pretty in depth, if you find yourself wanting to take it a little step further, tabletop RPGs are the way to go!
“RPG” is an acronym for Role Playing Game. Playing pretend is one of the ways children first learn how to adapt and take on roles and responsibilities. This love of pretending to be someone else in a different situation follows many into their adulthood. They use polyhedral dice too, which are much cooler than normal dice!
(image credit: pixabay.com)
One of the most famous RPGs is Dungeons & Dragons. It is a massively elaborate game with 2 kinds of positions: Player Characters (PC) and Dungeon Master (DM). The PC plays by making decisions for their character and the DM is in charge of creating a story and guiding the PCs.
These kinds of games require a lot more preparation, especially by the DM, but if you love role-playing it will be well worth it!
(image credit: canva.com)
As you can see, there are many different kinds of games with which you can reach out and have fun with your family.
My Weekend Plan has many baking classes through which you and your loved ones can learn to bake together. However, we also host several other lesson providers for other activities like knitting, photography and even batik workshops.
So come by and check out if we have any activities and experiences that you can share with your friends and family to further your bonds together.
https://www.myweekendplan.com.my
Comment (0)