Everyone knows that family time is important. It's widely documented that frequent family dinners are beneficial to the mental health and eating habits of children and teens, and that quality time can help families feel closer. It's also important to not give up or stop trying to find time for family time when kids reach that difficult pre-teen or teen age, says A Better Child.
However, family time activities are not always easy to come by. Finding an activity that parents and children and even grandparents can play is tricky, especially nowadays with the influence of video games and the Internet. Our answer to this conundrum is a game called Hats.
Hats is like charades but much more fun. It's also known as Celebrity, with a slightly different order of game play, explains How Do You Play.
Here's how to play Hats:
Cut up a bunch of strips of paper, three for each player. Divide the group into two teams, and have each player write down the name of one famous person, one place and one movie - one on each piece of paper. Collect all slips of paper in a hat. There will be three rounds played with these names.
Round 1: One person picks a slip of paper out of the hat and describes it using any words except the ones on the paper, until their teammates guess it correctly. If they guess it correctly, they pick out another slip of paper and keep going for a total of 45 seconds. If you get stuck on a word, you're stuck. No switching for a new piece of paper. When time runs out, mark down how many were correctly guessed in the 45 seconds. Pass the hat to the other team, where one team member will describe to their team for 45 seconds.
If the names in the hat run out mid-round, the player yells "STOP!" and the timer pauses while all the names are returned to the hat for round two. Then, the same player can start round two using the same batch of names until however much time was left on their timer runs out.
Round 2: This round is very similar to round one, except that you only have one word to describe the word on your slip of paper. It's helpful to use the descriptions from the previous round - if someone was describing "Austin Powers," and had said "it's a movie with a groovy guy from the 70s, played by Mike Myers," for the one-word round, the player could say "Groovy", which would be enough to tip their teammates off to what they're describing. Go back and forth between teams in 45-second rounds until the names run out again.
Round 3: This round is basically speed-charades. The rounds are 45 seconds long, and each person acts out the names in the hat to their team, as many as they can in the time limit. No words, only gestures and actions.
All this sounds a bit complicated, but once gameplay gets going, it'll flow much more easily than it seems. At the end of the game, the scores are tallied and one team is declared victorious. Have fun!
