From Panic to Play – Part 2: Indoor Edition

See Part 1 of this guide at this Link.

No matter how thorough you may have been, no matter how prepared you think you are, a problem can pop up at your party at any moment. Maybe the pizza you ordered is running late, the weather shifted, and your outdoor party is forced indoors, your Bluetooth speaker’s battery died, or a game you thought was going to last for a long time suddenly ends after only 15 minutes. No matter what it is, a lull in your party can be stressful when trying to keep your young guests happy.

Well, there’s no need to panic! Below are some ideas with little to no preparation to keep your party moving along.

Simon Says:

We pulled this from the previous guide, as it is a great game for the indoors.

An old classic that remains a source of laughter today. Have someone be the caller and give out commands to the players with the phrase “Simon says, such as “Simon says stick out your tongue”. Players need to do the commands as they are given, or they are out. The caller will try to trick the players by giving a command without saying “Simon says. Anyone who does the command without the phrase is out.

• Bonus ideas:
  • The winner of the game gets to be the caller for the next game.
  • Change the phrase to the birthday child’s name or whoever is the caller.

Laser Maze:

This game requires a little preparation. If you have an extra room where your guests can wait while you set up, the reveal is always fun.

For this game, you’ll need some string, yarn, or ribbon, and tape, preferably painters’ tape if possible. In a long hallway or a room, tape the string to the wall or furniture in a zigzag fashion to create a “laser” grid. Your guests will have to navigate through the laser maze. The looser the grid, the more likely your guests may try to run through the maze, so you may want to make the grid a little tighter. This is dependent on the age range, though, a looser grid is better for a younger group who might not have fine motor skills yet.

Note: This event is a great photo opportunity. Be sure to take plenty of photos if you’d like to capture your guests with huge smiles on their faces.

Don’t Laugh!

This is a great game if your guests are getting a little overexcited and need to calm down a little bit. For this game, have your guests sit or lie on the floor. The goal of this game is not to laugh out loud. An adult or multiple adults will tell your guests jokes in an attempt to make them laugh. If you don’t have jokes ready to go, a simple online search for kids’ jokes will give you plenty of material. During the game, if a guest laughs, they are out for that round. The last person not to laugh wins the game, and then the next round begins with everyone back in the game. You may want to be a little lenient on what constitutes a laugh, with only open-mouth laughs counting.

Sticky Note Hunt

This is another game where you will need to do a little preparation work. You will need to have your guests wait in another room while you set up the game.

For this game, you will take a pack of sticky notes and hide them all through a room. For younger groups, hide them in plain sight; for older groups, you may want to get tricky with the hiding spaces. How many sticky notes you use is dependent upon the size of your group, with around five or so notes per person. Your guests will need to collect the most sticky notes to win the game.

Note: If you have anything easily breakable in the room, be sure to move or secure it.

• Bonus Ideas:
  • Instead of collecting the most sticky notes to win, an alternative idea could be to draw a star on the inside of one or more sticky notes so that they are not visible from the outside. Whoever finds the special sticky note(s) wins. This works really well if you have some sort of prize to give the winner(s).
  • If you want to play this game multiple times, have someone hide sticky notes in another room while your guests are hunting for sticky notes in the current room. This way, you can start another round almost instantly.