Family Fun: Messy Games!

If you’ve been looking for a wild family activity, then family messy games might be something you want to consider!

A couple years ago my family started having a messy party as a way to have some extra fun for all the cousins.  I have 5 siblings and now that most of us have begun having our own children, we make quite the crowd. 🙂  Laughter and some form of shenanigans are always close by when we’re together.

This year as we made plans to descend like locusts get together at my parents’ house when my brother and his beautiful wife were visiting from California, we knew Family Messy Games had to be on the agenda!

This year we ended up doing 7 messy games.  Due to the number of people in our expanding family (by the end of this year there will be 25!), we’ll probably trim this number down next time to keep it from getting too long.  There’s no right way or wrong way to do messy games, just get messy and have fun together!

Gone Fishing

We placed 3 gummy fish in aluminum pie tins and then covered them with whipped cream.  Each person received a tin and had to “go fishing” without using their hands.  Most of the children placed their tins on the ground and everyone else held them.  Everyone ended up with whipped cream all over their face. 🙂

Pickle Spitting Contest 

Using a target drawn on poster board, we had a pickle spitting contest.  It was actually more difficult than you might think.  Only one person made a bullseye and very few pickles actually hit the target.

Blind Feeding

We paired children and adults into teams.  One person sat on the ground while the other person fed them pudding from behind while their eyes were shut.  I skipped blindfolds since I would need so many.  I bought some silly party glasses for eye protection that added to the hilarity of it all.  The picture above is my mom and my oldest son (age 14).  Love it!

Fill the Cup

All the adults who thought they had outsmarted me by getting out of the pudding feeding were surprised when partners had to switch places.  For this game, one person had to lie on their back and place a small cup on their mouth.  The other person stood over them and had to fill the cup with mustard.  First one to fill the cup wins!

Note: To make this more difficult, you could make the person stand on a chair.  We had so many young participants that it wasn’t in the best interest of safety to do this. 😉

I wasn’t sure if my family would like this game, but it ended up being put on the must-do-every-year list.  As you can see, even the little ones wanted in on the action.

Frog Hunting

We also went frog hunting! For this activity we filled two bowls with gummy frogs, water, and ice.  The object of the game was to see who could get the most amount of frogs out of the bowl using only their feet in 30 seconds. The gummy frogs got very slippery in the water so next time I would probably use marbles.

Cheese Head

We paired up again for the next game. One partner wore an ultra chic shower cap with whipped cream and had to catch cheese popcorn on their head which was thrown by their partner. The team with the most popcorn on the cap wins. I think this would also be hilarious if you could make whipped cream beards.

Everyone was such a good sport! Here’s our cheesy group. 🙂

Donut on a String

The final messy game of the night was the good ol’ fashioned donut on a string. This is probably the most popular activity within our family. We tie donuts on strings from a tree in my parents’ front yard, cover them in chocolate syrup,  and the first one to finish eating their donut wins!

I purchased everything but the mustard, chocolate syrup, and donuts at the local dollar store so this really can be a frugal family night. I also tried to stay away from too many games that had us eating lots of the food. This mama can only handle so much high fructose corn syrup consumption. 😉

I’m already compiling a list of potential games for next year. This tradition really is such a blast and is worth every sticky minute. I’m not sure if the children or adults have more fun! One thing is for sure, we’re creating memories that we’ll all carry with us for the rest of our lives. And that’s what family messy games is all about for us.

What about you? Does your family have any messy traditions or do you prefer to keep things a little cleaner?

You can find more fun family night ideas here!