Advent 30 What's Up Challenge 27 - Play a (board) game together with friends or family

Why is this good for your emotional health and wellbeing?

Playing games at Christmas is good for our wellbeing as they help provide an opportunity for us to come together and bond with friends and family in a fun way. This can help strengthen our connection with others and create lasting memories.

How to complete this challenge?

Get together with a friend or family members and play some games.

Games to play could be:

Charades, Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble, Dobble, Bingo.

Free easy pen and paper games you can play:

1. Charades

Divide into two teams and hand out blank slips of paper to both teams. Each team needs to write down different phrases on each slip of paper. The phrases can be famous quotes, titles of books, movies or songs, but they should be something that most people are familiar with. When both teams have prepared their slips, they need to place them in separate bowls or boxes. Then a person from team A draws a slip from team B’s bowl and tries to act out the phrase for their own team to try to guess what it is. Each team has three minutes to try to guess the phrase and then it’s the other team’s turn. You are not allowed to speak but only act out each word of a given phrase.

2. Who Am I?

Each player gets a sticky note stuck to their forehead with the name of a famous person. Each player has to guess the name of the person on their own forehead by asking everyone else simple “yes” or “no” questions. It can be questions such as: Am I a female? Am I a historical figure? Am I currently alive? If the answer to your question is yes, then you get to ask another one. If the answer is no, then it’s the next person’s turn to ask questions and try to guess the name on their own forehead. The first player to guess the identity of their mystery person is the winner! Everyone else can keep playing for second and third place.

3.Lip-Reading Challenge

Write as many different words or phrases on slips of paper and mix them all up in a hat. You can play this game as a single group just to have some laughs, or you can split up into two teams and compete. One person from the team needs to put some headphones on and play loud enough music so they can’t hear anything else in the room. The rest of their team draw phrases from the hat and say them out loud, while the person with the headphones tries to read the words off their lips. The teams can take turns in 2 minute intervals or simply draw a certain number of cards each. Whichever team has the most correct answers in the end is the winner.