5 Family Christmas Games to Play with the Kids

The holiday season often brings families together, and it can be even more meaningful for kids when it includes special traditions practiced every year. Your family may bake a favorite cookie recipe, sing holiday songs, or watch a favorite seasonal movie. If you are looking for a new holiday tradition to start with your family, consider adding a fun DIY game to play together!

Here are five DIY Christmas games to play with your little ones:

Gingerbread Man Game

Run, Run, as Fast as You Can is a great game for the whole family to enjoy. All you need is dice, a marker, and paper on which to trace a gingerbread man. Fill your outline with random numbers, then let the fun begin! Similar to Bingo, the kids will mark off the numbers that they roll using different colored markers. The first person to mark off all the numbers wins. We only used numbers one through six since we have a younger student, but this would be a great opportunity to work on addition, too, if you go beyond the six digits on the dice.

Snow and Sidewalk Games

Who doesn’t love a good round or two of tic tac toe or dots and boxes? Add a new element to the old games by mixing food coloring and water in spray bottles to make DIY Paint. You can use it in the snow or on the sidewalk. Your family will spend hours outside playing, creating, coloring, and painting every inch in your yard.

North Pole Ring Toss

North Pole Toss is an easy game, and really fun to make! We used old wooden stair spools and paper plates for the rings, but you can use wooden dowels or empty paper towel rolls for the pole and Frisbee^® discs for the rings. Paint them, cover them with festive duct tape or wrap them in holiday paper, and watch your DIY game come to life!

Balloon Tennis

This may be your kid’s vote for the new holiday tradition. With just a few items, they can play balloon tennis! Tape jumbo Popsicle^® sticks onto the back of paper plates to make your rackets, and blow up the balloon to make your tennis ball. Review the rules of the game or make up your own to suit the number and age of your players. Balloon tennis gives kids all sorts of opportunities to exercise their gross motor skills as they jump, leap, stretch, balance, and lunge!

Candied Concentration

Memory games are great brain exercises, and a helpful way to learn over the holidays. Use Hershey’s Kisses and put numbers or holiday symbols on the bottom. Then ask your student to lift two at a time and try to remember where the matches are. When they’re done, try making a bigger board and, of course, let them enjoy a treat or two.

Share your Christmas games and any other fun holiday traditions your family enjoys in the comments section.