Fun Birthday Party Games for Teens

As the years have passed, I found it necessary to come up with creative birthday party games for my kids as they reached their teen years. This hasn't always been easy, but it sure has made for a lot of fun! Here are a couple of games that we have used in our parties, and have had great results with.

Game One: The Blindfolded Artist
Object: Sculpt clay objects while blindfolded
Items Needed: Modeling Clay, waxed paper, a blindfold, a bowl, paper slips, pencils, table and chairs, stopwatch

How to play: Have all of the kids gather around the table. Give each of them a slip of paper and a pencil. Instruct them to each write down the name of an animal, fold their paper, and place it in the bowl. When everyone has completed this step, pass the bowl around, and have each person take one piece of paper. They can look at it, but they can't tell anyone what it says!

Starting with the person chosen to go first, blindfold them, and hand them a lump of clay. They now have 2-3 minutes (you choose how long) to try to sculpt the animal that was on their slip of paper. When their time is up, it is up to the remaining players to try to guess what the animal is. When you are done, move on to the next person. The kids love this, because unless you have a really talented artist in your midst, most of the "animals" are unrecognizable.

If you are giving prizes, you can give a prize for the most accurate sculpture, or for the funniest. The choice is up to you.

For fun, take pictures of all the sculpted animals with their creators at the end of this game. It makes a great memory for the scrapbook!

Game Two: Round Robin
Object: Keep the kids moving!
Items Needed: Multiple video games, board games, hand-held games, computer games

How to play: This is totally about keeping the kids occupied, and having fun! Set up multiple types of games around your house in stations, and every so often, (30 minutes or so), have the kids swap game stations. It keeps them interested, and nobody gets bored.

For example, last year my son turned 14 and we held a video game madhouse. He had his friends bring their different games and game consoles, (X-Box, Playstation 3, Guitar Hero, Wii, Nintendo DS, etc.), and we set them all up in different areas of the house. We hooked up the Wii in the living room on the main TV, Guitar Hero and PlayStation were upstairs in my son's room, DS's floated all over the house, and of course the computer games were in the office.

Usually there were 3-4 kids in each area, and every half hour to forty-five minutes they would switch games and areas. Sometimes, the kids even totally switched which group they were with, so you never knew who was going to show up where. This literally went on for hours, and the kids had a ball! No fighting, no fussing, just a whole lot of fun. Be prepared for a lot of noise, and a lot of mess ... but a great birthday party!

Words of caution: Always remember to keep any of your liquids/snacks away from the electronics, and try to keep wires out of the way as much as possible to avoid any mishaps.

I hope you enjoy these ideas for birthday party games, and that they come in useful for you in the future!