Christmas Charades Printable

Dad 101 often talks fondly about playing Charades with his extended family at Christmastime. It’s a tradition he has been looking forward to sharing with our girls and I have a feeling this year will be the year! So I have created a set of printable Christmas Charades Cards for us to use, and I am sharing them today so that you can use them with your family (or class, youth group or colleagues) too!

There are 66 cards in the set and they feature words and phrases that represent Christmas and holiday related items, activities, carols and songs, movies and characters. You can remove cards that are not relevant to your family’s experience of Christmas and add other cards that represent your own traditions and experiences – I have included a blank sheet of cards in the download for this very purpose.

Of course, my creative, imaginative six year old couldn’t resist having a turn!

Can you spot The Grinch??? 🙂

How to Play Christmas Charades

You will need:

• A printed set of Christmas Charades cards. Download your set of Christmas Charades cards here.
• Friends to play

To play:

1. Choose a player to start the game. The player selects a card at random (without looking).

2. The player pantomimes the word or phrase on the card he’s chosen to the other players – no speaking allowed!

Some common action clues used in Charades include;

• A song: Pretend to sing
• A movie: Pretend to crank an old fashioned movie camera
• TV show: Use index fingers to draw a small rectangle
• A book: Pretend to read a book
• Number of words: Hold up the number of fingers in the phrase. When acting out the first word, hold up one finger, then two fingers before the second, etc)
• Sounds like: Tug your ear
• Short word: Words like a, the, of, and can be indicated by closing the thumb and index finger of one hand together.

3. The other players must watch carefully and call out their guesses. The first person to guess the correct word or phrase takes the next turn.

Optional: Allocate points to each person for each correct guess. The person with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Alternatively, divide into teams before playing. Each player takes turns pantomiming for their teammates. The first team to guess the word is allocated a point. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.

And then get ready to play our fun Christmas Who Am I? Game!

This post forms part of the Christmas Sensory Play Series! I have connected with some of my favourite play bloggers and we’ll be bringing you festive play ideas related to each of the five senses suitable for children of all different ages.  Check out these great ideas;

• Cathy of Nurturestore: LOVE Cathy’s simple ideas for decorating cardboard trees and making them into a matching game. FUN!

• Kate of Picklebums is sharing some ADORABLE DIY Christmas glasses that your kids will LOVE decorating and wearing, promise!

• Meri of Meri Cherry invites you to find Santa with a pair of AWESOME Santa binoculours! Where is that guy anyway???

• Ana of Babble Dabble Do: Your kids will think they’re SEEING THINGS with these SUPER optical illusions!
• Kristina of Toddler Approved: I can’t wait to MAKE a fantastic Christmas Photo Tree for AJ. Such a GREAT idea!