Family Game Night Ideas: Jenga with a Twist!

If your family are fans of family game night, then you just have to check out this game of Jenga. It’s not any Jenga, we’ve hacked it for a whole lot of extra family fun and a whole lot of laughs. It’s Jenga with a Twist!

Jenga family game night hack

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How to Hack Your Jenga With a Twist!

So how did I hack our Jenga tumbling tower? Simply by using a permanent marker to write a fun activity on the side of each wooden Jenga block.

Things to Write on Jenga Blocks

The activities you choose for each block are completely up to you but our faves include;

  • Exercises: plank, balance on one leg, wall squat, high knee run (each for 1 minute), 5/10/15 star jumps, push ups, sit ups, twirls, squats, burpees, lunges
  • Physical actions: handstands, cartwheels, somersaults
  • Fun ways of moving across the room or around the table, such as crab walk, frog jump, duck waddle,
  • Common yoga poses such as tree pose, cobra pose, butterfly pose, mountain pose, cat pose and dog pose
  • Thumb wrestle challenge with another player
  • Simple songs or nursery rhymes to perform
  • Tickle tag – when someone chooses the tickle tag block, everyone must get up and run away so not to be tickled!

Jenga with a twist

You can also add;

  • A bit of drama – for example, act like a cat or fly like a bird
  • Miming challenges, such as mime a nursery rhyme for other players to guess
  • Dances crazes such as Vogue, The Locomotion, Time Warp, Dab, the Twist, YMCA, Macarena, Gangham Style or Walk Like an Egyptian!
  • Math challenges, for example, count to 100 by 5s

Feel free to label more than one brick with the same activity as in most instances different players will pull each one.

The rules of Jenga are the same as usual, except this time as each person pulls out a brick they need to perform the action labelled on the block they have chosen.

Jenga Hack

For some extra fun and laughter, mark 5 or so bricks with asterisks on the end. When a brick with an asterisk is pulled from the game, every player must complete the action.

Jenga hack ideas

You could also mark a few of bricks with another shape or motif and whenever these bricks are pulled the player can choose another person playing to perform the allocated action or task.

Alternatively, hack your blocks to create an Emotions Jenga Game or a Silly Sentences Reading Game for early readers.

Jenga hacks

This cool hack really adds an extra element of fun to your family game night! Let me know if you give it a try.

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6 Comments

  1. i love this idea! I’ve been looking over your website for ideas to inspire my sons, ages 11 and 12, to do something that is not screen-related… for pre-teens. This game is perfect! My 12-year-old has special needs, and really benefits from Brain Gym-type exercises, so I’m going to include some of these on the blocks. Thank you so much!

  2. This is brilliant! I will try and quickly pull this together tonight for a party tomorrow night where I am on kid entertainment duty!

  3. Pingback: 15 gier typu „zrób to sam” nie tylko na Dzień Dziecka | Mama w domu

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