Fun Office Christmas Activities

Just because you’re stuck in an office all day doesn’t mean Christmas fun can’t extend to your workplace. Depending on the environment at your work, it’s definitely possible to mix holiday fun with work.

One obvious choice for some fun at the office during the holidays is to have a party. You could have several, in fact. How about a cookie exchange party? Plan to do this at lunchtime one day, and during that block of time, everyone brings several dozen cookies they have made. You have to set a particular number of cookies everyone brings. Because once everyone has an empty plate, they go around the table picking up cookies that look good to them and place them on their empty paper plate. If everyone brought 3 dozen cookies, say, then everyone gets to take home 3 dozen cookies. This is not a particularly unique idea, but one that brings a bit of fun into the workplace.

Keeping in mind whether or not the public visits your workplace, you might choose to decorate. Why not have a Christmas tree decorating event? Everyone brings 6 ornaments and as a group activity, everyone decorates the tree. This is a good way to build team spirit and decorate your workplace at the same time.

Don’t forget to institute a “secret Santa” event at work, where you secretly buy gifts for someone and have some type of gift exchange. But what about a “Santa’s helper” activity? Someone in the group has to begin this on the sly. Essentially, this first person (the only one in the know about how the whole thing began) puts together a little gift. Ideally, it’s a basket with a few gift items in it. They might be decorative items, or baked goods or even bath items. Attach a card saying that “Santa’s helper” dropped by and brought these items. Now the person who received the “helper’s” gift must put together a little something for someone else and - again on the sly - deliver it to the next person. It continues until everyone has received a visit from “Santa’s helper”.

Nothing brings people together like a group activity designed to help others. What if your officemates came up with an activity designed to help people less fortunate at the holidays? You might adopt a local family and everyone in the office purchases items for that family. You might choose to purchase Christmas trees for needy families. If the public visits your office often, you might even begin a “sharing” tree and people can bring items to put under the tree for needy families or children. As a group activity, the office workers can then deliver these items to the needy.

The particularly festive office might want to have someone come in and do a cooking demonstration. If there are enough people interested, you can hire a cook or baker to come into your office on your lunch hour and do a demonstration or class. Say you want to bake but don’t know what to bake this year. A baker can come in and demonstrate cookies or other goodies you might not have thought to make. Or someone can come in with ideas and samples for the perfect Christmas meal. These ideas are perfect for the environment where people work many hours and are quite busy but still want to do their regular cooking and baking each year. Thankyou For Your Reading. 567

Christmas Table Games

If you’re getting everyone together for Christmas dinner, you want to provide some fun activities and games in addition to just the meal. Here are some good ideas to keep the crowd in the Christmas mood and keep them busy and diverted until the meal is ready.

Guess the dinner - Have all the people who are not working in the kitchen do a smell test and try to figure out what’s on the menu for dinner. Sure, turkey or ham or roast beef might be an obvious choice and an easy one if they are traditional in your family, but what’s the potato smell? Is it a hashed brown casserole, or baked potatoes? Are they mashed with sour cream or garlic? Are there brussel sprouts for dinner or squash, or both. The winner, or the person who most closely guesses the items on the menu, gets a taste test.

Board game fun - Bring out the most kid-like board game you have. This might be one that was just opened that morning or something you already have. Get the men in the house (not the boys, but grown men) to sit down on the floor and play the game. A great picture can be had when the fathers and grandfathers are on the living room rug playing Candyland or Chutes and Ladders. Better yet, bring out a princess game and enjoy watching the men get dressed up like princesses as the game goes on. As a secondary activity, pit the kids and dads against each other in a game of monopoly or cards. The kids can play with their dads on a team or the dads can play against the kids. Either way, it’s sure to be fun.

Tablecloth - If the children are getting restless waiting for the meal, have them decorate the tablecloth. This isn’t the time, then, to put great Aunt Martha’s tablecloth on the table, but something inexpensive and yet not disposable. You can keep the tablecloth from year to year and enjoy watching the progression of the children’s art through the tablecloth. Be sure to have them use permanent markers and have them date and sign it, if they are old enough. If they’re not, date and sign it for them. You’ll want that bit of information later.

Outdoor fun - Have a fun game of “toss the hat”. Fill Santa’s hat with some candy or other small items and try to toss the hat around without the items falling out. You can have a relay with Santa’s hat where everyone wears Santa’s hat, then hands it to the next person, who has to put it on and then take if off and then hand it to the next person. How about a rousing game of football, where the goal line is made of discarded Christmas ribbon? Or a game of soccer where the soccer ball is a rolled up ball of discarded Christmas paper.

Worst presents - Who has the best story about the worst present they ever got? Before dessert have everyone share their best of the worst stories. Be sure that you don’t tell the story in front of the person who gave you the worst present! What was the most interesting present you ever got? Or the best handmade present? What was the best present that came this Christmas? Dessert isn’t handed out until everyone shares a story, good or bad.

Where’s Santa? - While eating dinner, have a fun activity going on that’s sure to delight the children. Using a Santa hat, play a game of “where’s Santa”? Surely he’s back at the North Pole by now, right? Have someone start with the Santa hat and under the table, that person passes it to someone else. Everyone tries to decide where the hat is. Whoever has the hat (they can keep it in their lap while they eat) winks at someone else when they catch their eye. If someone gets winked at, they say, “Santa’s lost!” and this continues, with the passing of the hat and the winking, until someone figures out where Santa is. Thankyou For Your Reading. 680

Scary Halloween Classroom Games

Most children love all things Halloween. As adults, we assume it’s because Halloween means candy and children generally love candy. But many children love more than just the abundance of candy at Halloween time. They really get into the ghoulish aspect of the holiday and delight in the displays of goopy brains and squishy body parts.

Halloween games, therefore, can be really fun and goopy, if you wish. The kids will go with it, don’t worry.

First up, a brain game. There’s a fun game on store shelves where you pick through a rubber “brain” to figure out what’s in it. You can create this easily yourself. Make some jello and fill it with a variety of items, like gummy worms and other gummy candies, some small candy and trinkets and other items. Tell the children to root around in the bowl of jello (call it a “brain” if this will get the kids more interested) to figure out what’s in it. It’s goopy and messy and kids love it. Best yet, color the jello black so it’s too dark to see what’s inside and it looks more like goopy brain matter (the way kids see it, anyway).

In that same, or similar vein, kids love the spaghetti game. Be sure they are wearing a smock over their clothes or are wearing play clothes before playing this game. Make a big bowl of spaghetti and fill it with all kinds of items, like plastic bugs, gummy worms and other items that might feel a bit strange. Make the children feel around in the bowl of spaghetti and identify the items they feel. Once they are done and cleaned up, have them list as many items as they can remember. Whoever gets the most items listed (and right) gets a prize. Spaghetti, anyone?

Another similar game that’s always popular is to take a cardboard box and paint it black, both the inside and outside. Carve a small hole in the top, really just large enough for the children to get their hands into, and fill the box with a variety of items. They can be related to Halloween (like a small pumpkin) or not (wrapped Tootsie rolls or a tiny toy Hummer car). Have the children guess what’s inside the box and award the box itself to the child who guesses the most number of items correctly. To make this goopy and silly, be sure to include some items that might feel like body parts or brain matter.

Kids love creating silly fictional stories, often with absurd plotlines. Halloween is the optimum time to let them run wild with their imaginations. Have them spend a bit of time writing out the scariest story they can think of. Some children might need some direction not to make it ridiculously grotesque, so use caution with these children in your clarification of this assignment. Once the stories are written, have the children hand them in and then have a guest reader for each one of them. Each child will come to the front of the class and read the story with as much dramatization as they can muster. Once the story is read, everyone has to guess who wrote the story. The writer should play along, otherwise everyone will know it was their story! The winner is the child who wrote a story so intriguing and unusual that nobody knew it was his or hers!

Kids love the word find games when you give them a word or words relating to a holiday or something else and have them find words within those words. In this case, give them Halloween-related words and ask them to find as many scary words as they can. For example, you might give them the word “Halloween” and see how many scary words they can make from the letters. Or you could give them a series of words and let them rearrange the letters in all of the words to create scary words, or even create a story from the scary words. Put a time limit on this game and award a prize for the child who creates the most words in the least amount of time. Thankyou For Your Reading. 698

4th of July games

If you’re hosting a 4th of July party, there are hours and hours to fill before the highlight events of the day begin - the fireworks. You’ll want to have plenty of activities and games planned to keep everyone busy and entertained.

There are a variety of games you can plan that have a patriotic theme.

Balloon pass - This game involves relaying a balloon down a line of people. Use balloons that are red, white and blue and tell the participants they will be using their hands and their legs to pass the balloon down the line. Create two teams of people, and line them up in straight lines. Give the first person a balloon and tell them to put it between their legs, passing the balloon to the next person in line with their legs only. That person will take the balloon and pass it to the next person by putting it over their head. That third person will put the balloon between their legs and pass to the next person like that. The game continues until the balloon has passed all the way down the line. If you have a small group, require that the balloon get passed down the line and back again before declaring a winner.

Chalk it up - Pick a panel of judges (the oldest members of the family are the obvious picks) and have them become the official judges for a chalk contest. Break your guests into two teams (or more, depending on how many people are at the party) and give them each one or two containers of sidewalk chalk. Tell them to create a sidewalk picture that shows something patriotic, and tell them the flag must be included in the picture. Give them a time limit (depending on your group, this time limit might range from 10 minutes to 45 minutes) and then have the judges declare a winner after they have carefully examined all the artwork. You could have art-themed prizes for the winners.

Parade - One fun 4th of July activity that just screams “4th of July!” is a parade with decorated bikes, scooters and the like. Ask everyone who comes to the party to decorate their bike or scooter or other item in patriotic garb. You can have people bring them to the party already decorated and have a contest for “best bike”, etc., but also fun is to have a decorating party within the party. Have all the items on hand to decorate the bikes and scooters and skateboards. You might have streamers, banners, flags, and ribbons. The children and adults can decorate their bikes and scooters as a party activity.

Guessing Game - These games are always popular for just about any occasion. Fill a large jar with peppermint candy (the red and white striped kind) and decorate it with blue and red ribbon. Have people guess how many candies are in the jar (which of course means you count as you place the candies in the jar). The winner, or the person who comes closest to the number without going over, gets the jar of candy.

Fireworks - If you’re having fireworks at your home, you might have a big box of assorted fireworks. Everyone has their personal favorites and people might have clear ideas of what they want to see and hear. You can play a game to determine who gets to pick the next firework to go off next. You might ask trivia questions (why are there 13 stars on the flag?). Or you can have a dance off. While music plays in the background, each person who really wants to pick the next firework to go off has to dance the craziest, silliest dance they can come up with. Someone who’s been designated a judge will decide who won the dance off and that person gets to pick the next fireworks item. Unless there are more fireworks than people, each person only gets to pick once.Thankyou For Your Reading. 659

Classroom Thanksgiving Games

If you’re planning a Thanksgiving party in the classroom, there are a myriad of games you can have the children play that will be fun but also educational and useful in teaching the concept of being thankful.

Be careful not to overdo the turkey aspect of Thanksgiving. Some children forget that it’s about more than the turkey. Playing some fun games can help them remember the purpose of Thanksgiving.

Try a gratitude bag. Fill the bag with several cards, each with something on it. Some will say “Thanksgiving” while others will have a word or picture of other things. Some of those other things might be cars, food, clothes, etc. Have the children sit in a circle and draw a card out of the bag. If they get a card that has a picture or word on it other than “Thanksgiving” they should talk about why they are thankful for that item and why others should be as well.

For example, if the child choose “shoes”, they might express how thankful they are that they have shoes so their feet stay clean and they don’t get cold in the winter and they stay unharmed when they are walking. Depending on the ages of the children, this might be a simple response or something a little more involved once they understand the concept better. If they draw the “car” card, they might comment on how nice it is to have a car and not have to take the bus, or how nice it is that their mom can pick them up from school so they don’t have to walk home everyday. With help from the teacher or a parent, they might even note that in many parts of the world, people don’t have cars (or shoes) and that they are lucky to have all these things.

If the child chooses a card that says “Thanksgiving” they should come up with an original idea about something they are thankful for. Try to steer them away from things like “Playstation” but instead steer them toward things like “my parents” and “my house and my room”.

For some thinking fun, have kids do a word find with Thanksgiving words. Provide them with a list of words related to Thanksgiving. They might be “Thanksgiving”, “Cornucopia”, “Mayflower”, “Turkey”, etc. Then they must find words contained in those words. So, if the word is “Mayflower”, they might find words like “lay”, “flower”, “flow” and the like. “Thanksgiving” might turn into “thank”, “sing”, and “an”.See which child can find the most words in the list of words you provide them. Try to challenge the kids to find words within the words that relate back to Thanksgiving.

The old memory game is always fun and can be used for Thanksgiving too. Have the children sit in a circle and have someone start the game by saying, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat” and then finish it with one food item. So that child might say, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat turkey”, and the next child will say, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat turkey and cranberry sauce.” The next child would continue with, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat turkey and cranberry sauce and green beans.” Each child will carry on until the list becomes so long, someone is sure to forget an item. You can either star the game over or keep going until everyone is out but one child.Thankyou For Your Reading. 573