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Family Games

Dollar Store Minute to Win It

Dollar Store Minute to Win It party

By Sharla Kostelyk

Our Minute to Win It Family Fun Night was so memorable that I planned another one. This time, I chose to use items from the dollar store to keep within a tight budget. I spent less than $15 for all the supplies.

Dollar Store Minute to Win It Party - so much fun for a family fun night, party, holiday gathering, New Year's Eve, or youth group event.For the decorations, I used our printable Minute to Win It kit which has full instructions for all of the games as well as all the games we played in our original Minute to Win It family fun night. Minute to Win It Printable Decoration Pack in multiple colours

 

The supplies I bought from the dollar store:

  • 2 boxes of Kleenex
  • 1 pack of plastic cups
  • 1 pack of ping pong balls
  • 2 pairs of panty hose
  • 1 box of chocolate cookies
  • cereal box
  • 1 pack of tennis balls

Minute to Win It Games:

Puddle Jumper.

Supplies needed:

  • 3 plastic cups (the Red Solo ones work well)
  • ping pong ball
  • water

To set up for this game, fill three cups with water and line them up, setting a ping pong ball into the first one. The goal of this game is to blow the ping pong ball from one water-filled cup to the next.

Minute to Win It Puddle Jumper

Chocolate Unicorn.

Supplied needed:

  • chocolate cookies or Oreo cookies

All that’s needed for this game are chocolate cookies. Each player gets 10 cookies with the goal of stacking them on their forehead. The resulting stack must remain in place for 3 seconds.

Minute to Win It Chocolate Unicorn

Ponginator.

Supplies needed:

  • empty egg carton
  • ping pong balls

For this game, you will need an empty egg carton and ping pong balls. The goal is to bounce ping pong balls so that 8 of them land in the egg carton within one minute.

Minute to Win It Ponginator

Hanky Panky.

Supplies needed:

  • one tissue box for each player participating

This was hilarious to watch! It is more fun as a head-to-head challenge. Each person must sit with one hand behind their back. They must empty all the tissues out of the Kleenex box using only one hand as quickly as they can (if head to head) or within one minute.

Minute to Win It Hanky Panky

Ball Drop.

Supplies needed:

  • 3 ping pong balls
  • plastic cup
  • chair to stand on

Land three ping pong balls in a single cup while standing on a chair. The trick is to not have the balls bounce out or knock the cup over.

Minute to Win It Ball Drop

Breakfast Scramble.

Supplies needed:

  • cereal box cut into pieces

To set up for this game, you will need to cut the front of a cereal box into pieces. Depending on the size of the cereal box and the age of the people participating in your Minute to Win It challenge, you can either cut the box in 8 or 16 pieces. The goal of the game is to reassemble the puzzle within a minute.

Minute to Win It Breakfast ScrambleElephant March.

Supplies needed:

  • pantyhose
  • one or two tennis balls
  • 8 plastic cups

To prepare for this game, put a tennis ball in the end of a pair of panty hose or put a tennis ball in each leg of a pair of panty hose. Set 8 cups up on the floor to create a walkway. To play, the player must put the panty hose on their head and knock over all the cups by swinging their head from side to side. This is a pretty funny one!

Minute to Win It Elephant March

A note to all the moms out there: maybe you saw this and it just made you feel guilty because it’s one more thing you aren’t doing with your kids. I see you because often, I am you. I don’t want to have the parties or plan crafts or activities to do with the kids unless I have everything I need and can do it nearly perfectly. So years go by while I have the intention of planning a certain activity with my kids and it just doesn’t happen because I’m not organized enough.

This particular Minute to Win It night is a prime example. After our last one was such a success with the kids, I wrote out a plan for this one, every game written out. And my plan sat there for more than a year. One time, I even got a list for the dollar store written out, but then I realized I didn’t have time to bake and decorate a cake and make special food, so again, it didn’t happen. My kids got older, a full year older as my plan got dusty and my guilt grew.

The other day, I decided that we were going to do this but not perfectly. I wasn’t going to wait until my adult kids could get time off work and join us. I wasn’t going to plan any special food or decorate a cake. We were just going to have fun together and build memories.

Your kids get one childhood. You don’t have to make it magical, but you can make it memorable.

Sign up for a free copy of our Minute to Win It Build Edition challenge cards. These are fun, easy games to play as a family or group. All you need is the printed cards and building blocks such as LEGO.

You can read more about our printable Minute to Win It party kit here. The supplies you purchased at the dollar store for these Dollar Store Minute to Win It games can be used to recreate almost all of the games from our Family Fun Night Minute to Win It Challenge.

minute-to-win-it-squareThe Flour Game is also tons of fun for the family!

The Flour Game square

For the holidays, try the Minute to Win It Christmas Edition games. So much fun!

Filed Under: Crafts and Activities, Family Games

The Flour Game

On the top, a rounded mound of flour sits on a white plate with a green lifesaver candy on the top in the middle. Below that are the words "The Flour Game" and below that, a teen boy with a grey hat on backwards gives the thumbs up sign while his nose and mouth area are full of flour and he sits in front of a white plate of flour.

By Sharla Kostelyk

The Flour Game is so much fun. It’s perfect for gatherings with a variety of different ages because it can be played by anyone from a preschooler up to great-grandparents. This makes it a great option for family reunions or Christmas or Thanksgiving get togethers. It would also be great for a youth group event.

This flour game would be perfect for large parties, youth group events or family reunions because you can play with a wide range of ages.Another great thing about this game is that it takes very little prep and very few supplies. It can be played pretty much anywhere including outdoors so you could even play this when your family is camping.

Materials needed:

  • bowl
  • plate
  • knife
  • flour
  • LifeSavers or other small hard candies

Fill a bowl full of flour and pack it down. Continue to add flour until the bowl is full to the top and level it off. Place a plate over the bowl and carefully tip it upside-down and lift the bowl off, creating a mound of flour on the plate. Set a LifeSaver on top of the mound of flour.

The Flour Game squareEach player takes a turn cutting the flour trying not to allow the LifeSaver to fall. Players continue to take turns cutting the flour until the candy falls. The person that cuts the flour which causes the LifeSaver to fall has to then retrieve it with his mouth.

The Flour Game FBIt’s impossible to retrieve the candy without getting a face full of flour making this part quite funny! It’s also funny to see the attempts to retrieve the candy with minimum flour-face-coverage.

We played The Flour Game during our Just for Laughs Family Fun Night. Mackenzie was the first the end up fishing out the LifeSaver with his mouth. He did well retrieving it and only managed to get flour on his nose, mouth and chin but the others that followed after him weren’t so lucky! Unfortunately, I didn’t get pictures of that because I was laughing too hard and too engrossed in the game.

Family Fun Night for LaughsJust for Laughs Family Fun Night

Looking for more ideas for family fun or resources to help you connect with your child? Join our free 5 Days to Better Family Connection email series.

You might also be interested in these activities: 

The Bag Game

Minute to Win It PartyMinute to Win It Family Fun Night

Filed Under: Crafts and Activities, Family Games

Family Fun Night – Minute to Win It

By Sharla Kostelyk

These Minute to Win It games are hilarious! They are great to play at home with the family or at your next party or group event. Fun for all ages! We had a Family Game Night with a Minute to Win It theme. It was extremely easy to come up with the activities. 

A collage of 6 images with the words "Family Fun Night Minute to Win It" depicted on a white background in the middle. In the top left image, there are multicoloured balloons on a table. The photo beside shows a black boy with curly hair and his mouth in a wide open smile with an Oreo type cookie on one of his eyes. The next image is of a blonde girl transferring Smarties candies from one plate to another using a straw. The image beside that shows a boy in a blue shirt with his hands in a pair of beige panty hose. The image below shows a teen boy stacking many white plastic cups in a pyramid on a brown table. The last image is of a boy in a blue shirt with his arms raised up in the air in victory.This theme made the evening so much fun! We laughed a lot. It also worked really well for all the different age groups from our youngest child right up to us adults. One of the things that makes these games so versatile is that they can be used with groups of all ages.

For our party, I used a Minute to Win It party bucket, but it is no longer being sold, so I created a printable decoration kit for you that includes everything needed to host your own party.

Decorations:

The Minute to Win It Printable Party Pack includes:

  • Treat Bag Toppers
  • Cupcake Wrappers
  • Cupcake Toppers
  • Favour Bag Tags in two sizes
  • Straw Flags
  • Score Sheets
  • Game Directions for each of the games here and the games in our Dollar Store Minute to Win It night

 

Minute to Win It Printable Decoration Pack in multiple colours

Food:

I had planned to make cupcakes and number them from 1-12 and have them in the shape of a clock, but I ran low on time (ironic?), so we made mini cinnamon rolls instead. I made a variety of finger foods: veggies, surprise spread, tortilla chips, salsa, spinach dip, focaccia, crackers, cheese, and meat.

Minute to Win It Night food

Other food ideas for this theme:

  • take the top layer off Oreo cookies and draw a clock face on the white part with black edible pen or icing. 
  • make a veggie tray in the shape of a clock
  • fried cheese filled wonton clocks

Minute to Win It Games:

This was the really fun part of the night! All we needed was a timer and things that most people have around the house.

I did buy the ping pong balls, the Oreos, the Smarties, and the pantyhose, but everything else we already had on hand.

For prizes, I bought mini skateboards, parachute men, and let the kids keep a ping pong ball each. All told, the party supplies cost about $5.

Face the Cookie. 

Supplies needed:

  • Oreo (or similar type) cookies

This game is also sometimes called Cookie Face.

Have each person place a cookie on their forehead and try to get the cookie into their mouth using only their facial muscles. No touching with your hands! 

Einstein did it successfully. He was rewarded with bragging rights and finishing his Oreo!

Face the Cookie Game

Stack Attack.

Supplies needed:

  • 36 plastic cups

This game consists of stacking 36 cups in a pyramid and then back down into a single stack. We have found that the red cups, like the Solo ones, work well for this.

The Ferrari came the closest to conquering this one in one minute, but even he wasn’t completely successful.

Stack Attack Game

Movin’ On Up.

Supplies needed:

  • 7-11 red or white plastic cups
  • 1 blue plastic cup or permanent marker

(I love the look on Granola Girl’s face here!)

In this game, start with the blue cup on top of the stack of cups of another colour and stack the cups one by one until the first cup is on top again. Use 8-12 cups depending on the age and ability of those playing. If you don’t have a blue cup, you can mark the rim of one cup with a permanent marker and start with that one on top.

Minute to Win In Cup Game

Junk in the Trunk.

Supplies needed:

  • empty tissue box
  • 8 ping pong balls
  • adjustable belt or wide ribbon

This game is hilarious! With a tissue box strapped around the waist, the participants have to try to get out the 8 ping pong balls just by movement. 

It was really funny to watch! We laughed so hard that it was difficult to keep the game going!

Fill an empty tissue box with 8 ping pong balls. Use a belt or ribbon to attach the empty Kleenex box to the player’s waist. Contestants can then shake, shimmy, bounce, jump, or dance in an effort to get all the balls out of the box.

Junk in the Trunk Minute to Win It Game

Suck It Up.

Supplies needed:

  • Smarties, Skittles, or M+Ms
  • plastic straws
  • paper plates

In this game, players have to transfer Smarties or other similar sized candy from one plate to another using only a straw.

My kids were able to eat the Smarties afterwards which no one seemed to mind!

Suck It Up Minute to Win It Game

Penny Hose.

Supplies needed: 

  • 2 pennies
  • pantyhose

Players had to retrieve 2 pennies, one at the bottom of each leg of the pair of pantyhose. This is another funny one to watch. It’s more challenging to complete than it sounds.

Penny Hose Minute to Win It Game

Ping Pong Bounce.

Supplies needed:

  • ping pong balls
  • six cups

In this game, players have to bounce ping pong balls into six cups. Everyone was able to do it in the minute. It’s nice to choose some games that are a bit more attainable like this one so that people don’t get frustrated.

Mix in the easier ones with some of the more challenging games. This is especially true if younger children are playing.

Ping Pong Bounce

Keep it Up.

Supplies needed:

  • feathers
  • bucket or bowl

In this game, players have to blow a feather from one side of the room to the other and land it in a bucket or bowl.

This one is much harder to do than it sounds like it would be. In our family, only our oldest son was able to do it successfully. It was awfully fun to try it though!

Keep It Up Minute to Win It Feather Game

Yank Me.

Supplies needed:

  • index cards
  • plastic cups

This game was the hardest of the ones we tried. No one was able to do it in one minute. One of the kids was able to get close though. Maybe if you’re playing these games with a group of adults, you’ll have more luck.

To play, stack an index card on the top of the cup until there are five cups and then yank the index cards out to attempt to create a single stack of five cups.

Yank Me Minute to Win It Game

It was a great family fun night!  This was a very easy theme to plan around and it was one of the rare themes that worked well with the broad age range of kids that is represented in our family. It would be a great one to plan for family get togethers, family reunions, birthdays parties, or youth group nights.

Minute to Win It games are based on a former NBC TV show hosted by Guy Fieri where contestants would vie for prizes by competing against the clock in these type of games. They are easy to recreate at home or at the office.

Sign up for a free copy of our Minute to Win It Build Edition challenge cards. Use these cards to create an easy, impromptu games night. All you need is the cards and building blocks such as LEGO. 

You can find other hilarious game ideas in our Dollar Store Minute to Win It Night. There, you’ll find Chocolate Unicorn, Puddle Jumper, Ponginator, Hanky Panky, Ball Drop, Breakfast Scramble, and Elephant March.

Dollar Store Minute to Win It party

Our Christmas Minute to Win It is perfect for the holidays! 

Or check out our Minute to Win It Thanksgiving Games for your family gathering.

If you’re looking for outdoor large group games to play at a picnic, family reunion, or camping, our Minute to Win It Camping Games are the perfect solution.

If you’re looking for more fun party games for family or group get-togethers, check out The Flour Game.

The Flour Game square

Another game that is so easy to set up and can be played with large groups and a variety of ages is The Bag Game.

Don’t forget to grab your Minute to Win It Party Pack! Minute to Win It Printable Decoration Pack in multiple colours

Filed Under: Crafts and Activities, Family Games, Parenting in the Chaos

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