Games to play indoors/at home

Cabin fever took on new meaning this year, as we were forced to stay home well beyond the winter months. And that meant we needed to get creative to keep our spirits up – and our families occupied.
Enter family game time. You don’t need a closet full of board games to entertain the troops; imagination can go a long way (and save some bucks). Consider these game ideas from around the web:

* Minute to win it. Based on a TV show of the same name, participants compete in a variety of challenges with a minute to finish. This can include stacking pennies or plastic cups, barreling through obstacle courses, balancing as many books on your head as you can for a certain distance, etc. You’re limited only by your imagination and can expand into team tasks as well.

*Indoor snowball game: stack plastic cups into a pyramid (like at a carnival) and try to knock them down with those fluffy indoor snowballs. Balled-up socks work well, too.

*Drawing game: one person starts by drawing a shape on a piece of paper, then passes it to the next person, who adds to the sketch. Keep going until everyone’s had a turn or for a pre-determined amount of turns.

*Sock toss. Ball up clean socks and set up laundry baskets or other receptacles at varying distances, then assign points – a longer toss gets more points, a closer toss gets fewer. Beware that this may quickly turn into sock dodgeball.

*Ring toss. Use upright paper towel rolls and rings made from plastic plates.

There are tons of other ideas, from indoor cornhole to Bingo, Mad Libs, hangman, hot potato, fort-building, making a castle out of cardboard, making a bird feeder, setting up a play store, indoor (or outdoor) scavenger hunts, dance parties, and more.