Here’s a quick and easy game to play as a family, perfect for whatever you are doing today!
We play this whenever we need to fill a little time- waiting in the doctor’s office or for our food to arrive at a restaurant, while driving to school, or while folding laundry.
The game is called, “I’m thinking of an animal” and here’s how you play:
Each player thinks of an animal, but does not share the animal with the group. The animal must be one the other players would know.
The first player says, “I’m thinking of an animal that starts with the letter ___,” and fills in the blank with the appropriate letter.
The other players take turns trying to guess what the animal is.
They can ask questions to help them guess, such as:
- “is it a land animal or sea animal?”
- “would you find it on a farm?”
- “could you have it as a pet?”
- “is it a mammal?”
- “is it bigger than me?”
- “is it extinct?”
- “what color is it?”
If the other players are having trouble guessing what animal it is, they can ask for a hint.
The goal of giving hints is to help the others guess without giving it away completely. So last week when my kids were trying to guess my animal that started with a “B, ” I gave the hint, “change” which helped them guess butterfly as the answer. The hints can be anything from “we saw one on TV last week” to “we had one of these once.” Whatever helps your family guess works!
If someone guesses your animal on the first try, you get to go again. If no one can guess after a reasonable amount of attempts or a predetermined amount of time, then you tell the others your animal and move on.
In our family, we don’t have any more rules than that. Sometimes we play in teams, either kids vs parents, boys vs girls, or dad/daughter vs mom/son. If your family needs, add a rule or guideline to keep things simple or make sure everyone gets along.
For younger kids, you might want to limit your animals to specific places, like only farm animals or animals you’d find in your neighborhood. But as they get older, there won’t be a need for that. I played this a couple days ago when I was waiting somewhere with my son, and I’ll tell you now that my kids are a bit older, the animals they pick get pretty hard to guess……which of course means I didn’t do too well guessing (I mean seriously, I am way too tired to remember what a “Pangolin” is and didn’t stand a chance!!!), but we laughed a lot and had fun! He wasn’t bored or asking to play on my hone, and we both had fun together!
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