Last Updated on October 17, 2022 by Corinne Schmitt
Sometimes as an involved mom, you will need to come up with fun group activities for kids
. Whether it’s because you’re hosting a birthday party for your child or because you’ve volunteered to be room mom in your child’s classroom, at some point you’ll be responsible for entertaining a dozen or more children at one time. These games could also be used by teachers on the first day of school as team-building activities for the students to get to know each other.
I write a lot about activities for kids because, in addition to having five of my own, I also like to volunteer at their schools a lot. Having a ready list of fun games or crafts is a wonderful asset when you find yourself responsible for a group of kids!
Fun Group Activities for Kids
Most of these work well for any age group since the instructions are pretty simple and the fun is in the collaboration as a group.
Scavenger Hunt
I wrote an article on this classic game a few months ago. Click here to read the article which includes lists for indoor or outdoor hunts, as well as printable clues for treasure hunts.
Hedbanz
This is a funny group game that you could customize for older kids or younger kids based on the words you decide to use. You can buy the actual board game here or you can use these Forehead Game Words I made. We’re going to make headbands out of construction paper and use paper clips to affix the cards to them, but you could also just use tape to stick them on your foreheads.
Group Untangle
Form groups that have at least 3 people. Have the group members stand in a circle facing one another. Each person must join hands with 2 different group members to form a human knot. Once everyone is holding 2 different hands, the group must untangle themselves without letting go of each other’s hands. This is a great game to help your children work on their gross motor skills while also having fun!
Memory
You can play this two ways. 1) Arrange a group of items on a table. Have everyone study the table and set a timer for one minute. After the minute, have everyone close their eyes or turn around while you remove one item. The goal is to be the first person to figure out what item is missing. 2) Choose one person to be “it.” That person studies the entire group for one minute and then leaves the room. While the person who is “it” is out of the room, the group changes one thing (e.g. two people switch places, someone removes their shoes, someone stands instead of sits). The person who is “it” has to figure out what was changed.
Shoe Match
This is best done with a large group of participants. Divide the group into at least 2 teams. Everyone removes their shoes. All of the shoes are put into a giant pile. Everyone must find both of their shoes. The first team whose members all find and put on their shoes wins.
Category Charades
Just like regular charades but you create categories of clues. Divide the large group into smaller groups of 3-5 people. Assign each group their own space or corner of the room. Each group has a common goal to correctly identify all of their clues and the category of their clues.
Hand Squeeze Race and Hula Hoop Pass
These are two team-building games that are very similar so you can choose which one would fit your crown the best. For the Hand Squeeze Race, divide group into 2 teams. Have the members of each team form a line by standing side-by-side with the 2 opposite teams facing each other. Have each person hold hands with the person(s) next to them. Parent/teacher/party host (hereafter referred to as the line leader) stands at the front of both lines and holds hands with the first person in each line. Everyone but the line leader closes their eyes. The line leader squeezes the hands of the first person in line at the same time. That person, in turn, squeezes the next person whose hand they are holding, who will then do the same. When the last person in line’s hand is squeezed, he or she raises his or her unheld hand. The goal is to be the first team to pass the hand squeeze down the line to the last person.
For the Hula-Hoop Pass game, line up the participants the same way you do for the Hand Squeeze Race. Instead of squeezing hands, give the line leader a hula hoop on their arm. While holding hands with the next person, they must get the hula hoop over their body and step through it in order to pass the hula hoop to the next person. The next person must then do the same, and so on. This requires lots of teamwork from the participants in order to wiggle the hula hoop around each person. The first team to pass the hula hoop to the last person wins!
Four Corners
One person is “it” and stands in the middle of the room. Assign each corner of the room a number 1-4. The person who is it closes his eyes. Everyone else chooses a corner of the room to stand in. The person who is “it” calls out a number. Everyone standing in that corner is out. The game continues until only one person is left (the winner!). The prize is getting to be “it” for the next round.
I hope this list helps you next time you have to entertain a large group of kiddos. Most of them require nothing more than the kids themselves so you don’t even have to plan in advance. And since I’m probably not ditching my best friend anytime soon so I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing something like this again in the near future, if you have any other ideas please share them in the comments (especially if they are silent games which is apparently a key criteria). Please ignore the string of sarcasm that will appear in the comments once my friend finally reads this article and decides to share her side of the story.
More Activities for Kids
If you liked these ideas, you might be interested in some of these other posts on outdoor games, indoor games, and rainy day activities to keep kids occupied.
30 Outdoor Activities for Kids
Mess-Free Indoor Activities for Kids
28 Rainy Day Activities for Kids
Last Updated 10/17/2022
Four corners are just great 🙂 Love that!
I like your idea of FOUR CORNERS. I will play with my family members. Hope my children enjoy it. anyway thanks
lol that is funny, great ideas btw. I hope everyone had lots of fun
These looks like some great ideas for kids! a lot of fun! thank you so much for the fab post! xo xo
oh glad i stopped by. I am helping a fellow Mom organized a party for her 8 year old darling daughter. the games here seems just perfect for the occasion. bookmarked!
fun! Scavenger hunts have always been a hit with my kids.
I am going to use these for my little guys next bday I’m always trying to think of fun things to do at these 🙂
great ideas but stuff like this isn’t my thing. i hate being around other people’s kids and having to deal with them (which is why i no longer babysit my sisters kids). BUT!! great ideas nonetheless and would come in handy for others who love doing this kinda thing.
Most impressive… I shy away from party planning and just offer to make copies for the teacher instead. I have a tendency to get carried away and need guardrails like this post to keep me in check; saving for next year 🙂
What great ideas! I am going to pass this along to our VBS planning team!
Great activities! Sounds like everyone had a great time too!
What a great list! I think group activities are so healthy, not just for kids but for us all!
Great ideas! I love all of them. I had never heard of the head bands game, but then again, my daughter is now 22!
I hope I can remember this list in about 7 years from now!! We love Hedbanz – I play with my grands kids every time they come to visit….my mom even joined us once – so much fun!!
My daughters’ combined birthday party is coming up and I may just have to use a couple of these! Thanks for the ideas!
Four Corners! I remember that from when I was in school. Also, Heads Up Seven Up. Man, the memories…
Keeping my older children occupied will take a lot of work this summer.
Awesome games. I am keeping this one in my stash. After years of planning the field day at the end of the school year, I need some new activities.
It sounds like you 2 are a great team! I love all the ideas for the kids it sounds like a great time!
Lots of good ideas here. I think the Group Untangle would be fun for kids and maybe even for adults. 😉
Excuse me…. I can read… and yes I am the fun sucking friend. I would write more defending myself, but let me just say, the kids had a super fun party with both the OCD Mom and the “quiet game” mom. We reallly are a good match Wondermom…. you with the methodical planning and calculating and me flying by the seat of my pants with planning… the scavenger hunt was great, watching the kids work together and running around outside, but I think what they enjoyed the most was nominating eachother for the “best of” the class (ie… best smile, best reader, best dressed… ect.) Next time you mention me in your blog, it better be for something fun…. like splitting your lottery winnings with me, or telling them how great I am encouraging you to not go back to work so you can play with me when I’m bored, or how I work so hard to find nice things on the news to relate to you, so you know the world isn’t coming to an end, oh, and what Amanda Bynes is tweeting on an hourly basis, you know, important stuff like that.
Haha! We are a good team. And yes, if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t know what was going on in the world at all and I wouldn’t know which celebrities were having breakdowns. I am glad you talked me into a job that I can do at home so that I can still be here for my kids (i.e. be available for play dates with you). Also, there are very few people who can stand to spend several hours a day with me EVERY day so I’m pretty sure if you ever convert to Catholicism that accomplishment alone would qualify your for sainthood.
we are having our neighborhood party infront of my house on friday thanks for the game tips.
I hope the kids have fun. Heading to your site next to check out your foolproof ribs recipe. Mine always come out too dry!
I love doing scavenger hunts. I do these with my kids every time we go to the beach. We look for certain shells, fish, sand, etc.
My sister is a third grade teacher, I will pass this on to her.
Four corners and Hedbanz are great ones for indoor recess. Hopefully these will help your sister keep her sanity next time recess gets rained out and she’s trapped inside with the kids.
I am a room parent at my little one’s KG class and I have to come up with some activities. I like the Shoe Match and Four Corner and I think it will be perfect for them.
God bless you! Room moms are amazingly generous with their time and talents.
What fun is a quiet party? Is there even such a thing as one? Any and every party I ever attended as a child or went to as an adult was NOISY–These do sound like good ideas–but I can almost guarantee that no matter what you do (especially with 5th grade girls)-there will be noise and giggling etc!!
In fairness to my friend, she didn’t actually expect complete silence. She just didn’t want kids screaming and yelling over one another. We ended up having a lot of fun and with our hearing unimpaired. 🙂
LOL… leave it to your friend to put a monkey wrench into your well laid out plan. Thank goodness my days are over for supervising a bunch of kids hyped up on sugar.
I do love all your activity ideas and will most likely have a scavenger hunt for my Grandson this summer….. Did I say my supervising days were over?…
Haha! I feel like we got a small taste of being grandmas today. We got to sugar up the kids and get them all wound up, just in time to hand them back to their parents. Much more fun than being the parent!