Family Reunion Games

Ask people to bring "white elephants" things they dont want wrapped up so you cant see what they are. you could auction these off OR use them as funny prizes. Bingo is fun for all ages, little ones can be helped by older. We always did a peanut toss, wrap a rubber band around one peanut that one wins a prize, everyone else gets a bag of peanuts.

Egg toss.
Musical chairs.
Adult married couples can do a rolling pin toss.
3-legged races.
Wheelbarrow races.
Sack races.

These are games we did at our family reunions years ago...very fun for ALL ages.

Try the toilet paper square game. We used it in sorority rush to try to get different groups of girls talking. What you do is pass around a roll of TP, and, not telling anyone why, ask them to take some...as much or as little as they want. Once that's done, go around the room, and for each square the person is holding, they have to tell about one thing interesting/unique/exciting/not widely known about themselves that happened during the past year. It gets great conversations started.

I went to a couples wedding shower over the weekend and there were two games played that I think would be fun for a family reunion as well. For the first game, someone walked around and put a name tag on everyone's back. Each tag had one name - on it, one half of a celebrity couple. Everyone could see all tags, except their own. Then you had to ask questions to other people to try and get hints about who was written on your back. "Am I an actor? Am I male or female? etc." Once you figured out who was on your tag, you had to go find the other half of your couple. For example, my tag said "Barbie" and once I figured that out, I had to go find whomever had "Ken" on their tag. The first 3 "couples" to finish, got a prize. For the kids you'd have to make sure they got kid-recognizable nametags, like Lightning McQueen/Mater, Buzz/Woody, Max/Ruby etc. The adult couples are much easier, like Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Ashton/Demi....you could even do couples that are family members. (I'm sorry if that sounded confusing & took so long to explain!) The other game that was fun was Jeopardy. Everyone divided into two teams & there was a big posterboard with questions & point values. You could do categories like Family Vacations, Christmases Past, etc. There really wasn't a prize for the winning team because there were so many people, just bragging rights. :) Hope that helps a little - have fun!

I hope you'll get lots of suggestions. I'm not good at thinking up games, but what comes to my mind is that some of them should be games that get all the generations talking to one another, not just socializing by age groups. A game is needed with simple questions that can be asked and answered by schoolchildren and great-grandparents both.

And.or something, perhaps, that calls for intergenerational teams and that involves movement AND thinking-while-sitting-still, since both kinds of people will be on each team. A story that can be acted out? Or some sort of cooking-and-serving competition? My imagination is getting pretty far out here, but it's just to get your friend's imagination going.

And I hope there will be lots of name tags - and a big family tree picture!

good old-fashioned kick ball is fun! I went to a family gathering with my husbands family and we played a game of kickball that pretty much everyone could play. From the very young ones to even the older aunts and uncles. It was ALOT of fun. Its usually more laughs than anything. But its very easy to play and the only thing you need is a good kickball!

name-that-baby-picture :-) - DH's extended family (MIL was 2nd of 11 kids) has a family picnic each year and one year one of his aunts got a few poster boards and put a bunch of baby/kid pics for the 3 generations represented at the picnic and everyone had to guess the identities of all the kids in the photos.

Another easy one to do for all generations is to fill up a jar with a pre-counted amount of something (jelly beans, crayons, pennies, etc.) and everyone tries to guess how many of the item are in the jar - closest guess gets a prize.

Bingo with white elephant prizes (every family brings a few) is also a regular at the family picnic

Pictionary in teams, using butcher paper or a large dry erase board for drawing on is also a big hit. An alternative is to have play-doh and people have to try to construct the word instead of draw it.

relay races (potato sack race, 3-legged race, baseball bat spin around race)
watermelon seed spitting contests
waterballoon toss (everyone starts at the same line, tossing once, then everyone takes a step back, tossing again, step back, etc... Last team of two standing w/ a good waterballoon wins)

We had our 1st family reunion last year. We were clueless for activities. I just happened to find a box full of marshmallow guns at a yard sale. There were 25 of them and I had some at home. We went with those. It was a real icebreaker for almost everyone The older people didn't appreciate it too much but almost everyone else loved it! We plan to do that again next month for our 2nd reunion.