party · charades · free printable
Free Printable Family Reunion Charades Cards
Prompts a four year old, a reluctant teenager and a grandparent can all act out.
Made by the PaperCarnival team · Updated
24 prompts to act out · cut-apart cards · US Letter & A4
A family reunion has one game-shaped problem: whatever you choose has to work for a four year old, a teenager who does not want to be there, and a grandparent who is not getting up. Charades solves it, but only if the cards are right. Titles and celebrities split the room by age instantly. Household moments do not.
These twenty four are things everyone present has seen: the group photo nobody is ready for, the search for the reading glasses, the argument about the thermostat, the story being told again by someone who does not remember telling it.
Put one grandparent, one parent and one child on each team and the game does something a reunion rarely manages, which is get the generations talking to each other rather than around each other. The cards that land hardest are always the ones you write yourself. Open the deck in the generator and add the moments only your family would recognize.
The prompts
Every card in the deck, or edit the list in the generator
- Taking a group photo nobody is ready for
- Carving the roast
- Falling asleep in an armchair
- Looking for your reading glasses
- Arguing about the thermostat
- Passing a baby around the room
- Telling the same story again
- Doing a jigsaw puzzle
- Playing cards at the kitchen table
- Packing the car far too full
- Reading a map upside down
- Trying to fix something with tape
- Washing an enormous stack of dishes
- Dancing at a wedding
- Chasing a toddler
- Cutting a birthday cake
- Setting up a folding chair
- Watering the garden
- Getting the barbecue lit
- Waving goodbye from a driveway
- Pretending to like a gift
- Untangling a garden hose
- Looking for the remote
- Fixing a hairstyle in a mirror
Ways to play
Mixed-age teams
Put one grandparent, one parent and one child on each team. It is the only pairing that makes a reunion game actually work.
One minute, no talking
Standard rules are enough here. The prompts do the work, because everyone in the room has seen every one of these happen.
The photo round
Whoever guesses correctly gets to arrange the next group photo. It gets you the photo you were never going to get otherwise.
After the meal
The gap between eating and leaving is the longest hour of a reunion. Play a round in it.
Questions
Will it work across ages?
That is what it is built for. Every prompt is a household moment that a four year old has seen and an eighty year old has done a thousand times.
Can I add our own family stories?
Yes, and it is the version that gets remembered. Open the deck in the generator and write in the moments only your family would recognize.
Do I need anything else to play?
A timer and somewhere to stand. Nothing else.