Looking for a fun game for your family to play together over the holidays? Have you tried playing Charades?
My husband talks so fondly about playing Charades with his extended family at Christmas time as a child.
It’s a tradition he has so looked forward to sharing with our girls that I decided to create a set of printable Christmas Charades Cards for us to use, and I am sharing them here so that you can use them with your family, class, youth group or colleagues (download link below).
RELATED: Looking for Charades cards that aren’t Christmas related? Click through for our printable Family Movie Charades Cards , Kids TV Show Charades Game Cards or our Fairytale Charades Cards.
There are 66 Charades cards in this set and they each 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 cards that represent your own traditions and experiences – I have included a blank sheet of Charades cards in the download for this very purpose.
You can also extend your Christmas charades card collection with our add on pack of Christmas Movies Charades Cards. These are also free to download and print.
Of course, my creative, imaginative six year old couldn’t resist having a turn!
Can you spot The Grinch???!
How to Play Charades
You will need:
- A printed set of 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.
Grab a printable copy of our How to Play Charades game instructions.
And once you’re done, why not play a run of our fun Christmas Who Am I? Game!
Looking for more Christmas games? Click through to see our full list of Printable Christmas Games.
Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
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