Party Games - M's
Message Mix-Up
Seat your guests in a circle. Help the birthday child think of a message related to your party's theme. The birthday child then whispers the message to the person on their left, and so on. When the message has traveled all the way around the circle, the person on the birthday child's right tells the message out loud. Then the birthday child tells the original message. Expect the unexpected when you learn the original vs. the final mixed-up message. Try again with another player starting the message and continue until your guests are ready for a new activity.
Mommy Wrap
Divide the kids into pairs, with one the Mummy and the other the Mummy Wrapper. Give each wrapper a roll of toilet paper or crepe paper streamer. On the word "Go!" have the wrappers race to see who can wrap up their mummy first. The game is tricky because the faster they try to wrap, the more the tissue will tear, causing them to keep restarting!
Musical Chairs
Line up alternate facing chairs, one less than the number of children playing. The players move round the chairs while the music is playing. When the music stops they have to sit down on a free chair, the player without a chair is out, take away one chair each time, repeat until you have 2 players and 1 chair the one to sit down first is the winner.
Musical Chairs - Advanced
This fun variation of musical chairs is set up just like normal musical chairs but with additional fun thrown in. Start the music and have the children walk in a circle around the chairs, until you stop the music. When the music stops, each participant tries to sit in one of the chairs. The player left standing must pull the name of an animal, written on a piece of paper, out of a hat. Then, they must act it out while the other guests try to guess what the animal is. Start the music again and repeat the game until all the animals in the hat have been acted out.
Musical Chairs variation - Upset the Fruit Basket - Hats
It's a variation of musical chairs and works well with large groups 10 or more. Get a group of people to put their chairs in a ring. Just like musical chairs. Give each person is placed into a fruit group, for example you could have 4 apples, 4 oranges and 4 bananas (you can add more types of fruit if you have quite a few people). Each group of fruit should be 4 or 5 people is good, add more fruit names if needed. Then everyone sits in their chair and you call out apples and only the apples have to stand up and walk around the circle. While they are walking you remove one chair and at some point you call out apples again and all the apples scramble for a chair. The fruit left standing is out of the game. Then next you call out either a banana or orange. But if you say "upset the fruit basket" then everyone has to get up and walk around the circle. The winner of course is the last fruit in the basket.
Musical animals
There aren't really winners and losers in this game. Put on some music and the kids all dance around. As you stop the music you hold up a picture of an animal such as a lion, pig, dog. The kids then all have to jump around the room imitating that animal. The younger ones especially love this game.
Musical shapes
As a variant of musical chairs and for age 4 plus. Draw and colour some big basic shapes on large pieces of paper (e.g. yellow square, red triangle, green circle). Place these around the room where the children can see and reach them quite easily. The kids start dancing to the music and when the music stops, you shout out a colour and shape such as "yellow triangle" and all the kids have to rush to that colour shape. The last child there is out of the game. For the younger age group, stick to 4 or 5 colour shapes but for the older kids you could use more.
