Family games are a great way to spend the nights, or days. It can be really fun to gather your family and spend time with your loved ones. It is also an inexpensive and interesting activity for when it’s raining and the kids are restless. Try this game during your next family vacation on Pender Island.
“Categories” is a game to entertain people of all ages. It is also a good way to stimulate people into thinking, increasing vocabulary and keeping the memory sharp (or simply just to impress everyone with your extensive knowledge on animals). This is a simple game, easy to understand and there is no secret, everyone can play.
You will need:
One pen/pencil for each participant
One sheet of paper for each participant
A watch/clock/phone/timer (anything that keeps track of time)
Set up:
Have all participants sit around a table with space to write
Make sure participants are not too close to each other so no one can read the other’s paper, in other words, cheat
Hand out one pen/pencil and one sheet of paper to each participant
How to play:
Start by choosing the number of categories, usually is from 10 to 20, but you can have more or less if you like. Write them across on top of the paper, ideally you would have a table with the categories being the titles for each column.
These categories can be numerous different things such as name, country, fruit, animal, etc. Just keep in mind the age and knowledge of the participants when deciding on the categories.
According to the categories chosen and to the participants, establish a certain amount of time that the round will last (usually one to two minutes).
The first round starts with someone choosing a random letter of the alphabet. Then every player has to write down a word beginning with that letter for each category under that time you established.
After the time is up, every participant reads what he/she wrote down. If no one else wrote down the same thing as you, you get 10 points for each word/category. Otherwise, you get 5 points.
After all rounds are finished every participant has to sum up the points from each round and the winner is the one with the highest score.
Although it’s simple, the Categories game requires a lot of thinking depending on the categories chosen. Participants can be creative, silly or serious with categories ranging from “things you have in the kitchen” to “parts of the body”. It’s very likely that you will end up learning about things your didn’t even know existed!