New Year's Party Games for Large Extended Families

To celebrate the New Year, our extended family sits down together at Thanksgiving and plans out what we are going to do. We take turns throwing out ideas and deciding. While it is not a democracy, the kids do get input into what they want to do too. One year, we chose to play games while waiting for the ball in New York's Times Square to drop.

And while most of the younger children were not able to keep themselves awake that late (and we did not want them to), they also got in on the action. Early in the evening we played easy board games like Candyland and card games like Uno. Connect Four was also a popular choice, but it is only two player so not too many people can play at a time. Adults and children alike played the games so that it was a genuine family affair.

As the night goes on, the youngest kids head off to sleep land. The adults and older children played more advanced games like Battleship and Monopoly. The adults would also introduce the older children to more complicated games like Cribbage and Bughouse Chess. Cribbage is a great game for kids learning their basic addition and subtraction skills and it requires lots of addition.

Eventually, the older children get tired and what is left are the teenagers and adults. Bughouse and Cribbage kept going strong. Bughouse is a chess variant with two boards. When one person captures a piece, their teammate is allowed to place that piece anywhere on the board. You can find more advanced directions here.

Now days there is another options for games that are also fun for adults that if we were to do the game night again I believe we would add. The odds are the teenagers would also like it. That is the Nintendo Wii. Many of the sports and music related Wii games support up to four players at a time and the games can go pretty quick. If your extended family has a couple of Wii in their households you can run up to eight players at a time with two televisions.

Most families have some of the games listed above and if this is an extended family and friends event you can ask people to bring over their favorite games. If you find your short a few games or there is a particular game you really want to play, many of the games mentioned in this article can be bought for under ten dollars if you shop around.