We’ve played Bananagrams with our nieces, who are 9 and 11 or thereabouts. Involves using letter tiles to make words that are interlinked like on a Scrabble board, but without the board.
When our kids were younger we played a series of games in the car. Each of these “games” are good for 30 minutes of fun.
- We would come up with puns on a subject. Someone would toss out a subject and we would take turns throwing out puns. We loved this game!
Example 1: Artists / Painters
A. Show me the Monet!
B. Step on Degas, Dad … we want to get there sometime today.
C. Does the steering wheel feel Toulouse to you?
Example 2: Gas Stations
A. Take a picture for the Shell of it.
B. Is that a Chevron? No, it’s a Ford, and my name isn’t “Ron”.
C. Why are you hiding under the sink, Larry? (Sinclair)
This was one of the games that helped draw out my quiet, shy daughter.
- The Guess-the-Word game. This game teaches logical thinking.
One player chooses a 3-letter word. The other players try to guess the word. The person who chose the word tells how many letters are correct. Using logic and letter substitution, the other players come up with new guesses.
Example: Say the chosen word is “fun”. A player guesses “cat”, and receives an answer of 0. Another player chooses “few”, and receives an answer of 1. The next guess might be “sew”, and would receive an answer of 0. This should let the player know that the correct letter was “f”. We played this with our kids when they were around 9 or 10.