Games for 75th birthday party
May 26, 2012 3:50 PM Subscribe
Help me with games/activities for my mom's 75th birthday party. My sisters and I are planning a birthday party for my mom. There will 60 people there, ages 5 - 80. She doesnt want people just standing around bored and would like some games. We are already spending more than we budgeted on food and drink. Please suggest some no cost or extremely low cost entertainment ideas. Two of us will be flying into town a couple days before the party and the other sister who lives in town is also planning a high school graduation party for her son and just added a year old foster child to her brood of six kids so most planning will need to be done remotely. We're having a Fiesta theme so bonus points for taking that into account.
I played this as an icebreaker once, but its good for getting people interacting and very energetic.
Each person gets a famous person on his/her forehead with a "my name is" sticker. You can ask one question of each person, only one, and they must be yes/no questions, with the goal of identifying who you are. First one to figure it out wins.
posted by DoubleLune at 4:14 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
Each person gets a famous person on his/her forehead with a "my name is" sticker. You can ask one question of each person, only one, and they must be yes/no questions, with the goal of identifying who you are. First one to figure it out wins.
posted by DoubleLune at 4:14 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
Best answer: ms_rasclark's mom trivia! You and your sisters, and any grandchildren old enough to contribute, can each come up with 3 - 5 questions about your mom, for a total of 15 - 20 questions. (For example: What's her shoe size? Favourite colour? Favourite food? Where was her wedding? etc... you should be able to come up with some fun ones!) Break your 60 partygoers into teams of 5 or 6, ideally with some age variance. The team with the highest score gets some kind of small privilege,like going first at dinner, or even just bragging rights. Make some of the questions very easy and some pretty hard. If a fair number of people from your mom's generation plan to attend, it might be nice to get one batch of questions from one of her peers, so you'll have some questions that will stump younger people and make older people nostalgic.
A "find someone who ____" mixer might be good, too, for such a large group of people. Google for People Bingo, there are a lot of different versions out there.
posted by snorkmaiden at 4:26 PM on May 26, 2012 [4 favorites]
A "find someone who ____" mixer might be good, too, for such a large group of people. Google for People Bingo, there are a lot of different versions out there.
posted by snorkmaiden at 4:26 PM on May 26, 2012 [4 favorites]
Best answer: -Buy a ream of paper.
-Set an empty wastebasket on its side at some distance away, preferably at eye-level or higher.
-Have participants make paper airplanes and try to sail them into the wastebasket.
posted by Gilbert at 4:28 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
-Set an empty wastebasket on its side at some distance away, preferably at eye-level or higher.
-Have participants make paper airplanes and try to sail them into the wastebasket.
posted by Gilbert at 4:28 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
Will there be an outdoor/lawn area where games can be played? We've had a lot of fun playing bocce, croquet, cornhole, volleyball or badminton at parties in the past. Gives the kids something to do to burn off energy without requiring a lot of adult supervision, and the adults can rotate in and out of games as they choose. You could ask around and probably find some games to borrow, or I've seen inexpensive sets that include several different games in one bag at stores like Target in the past.
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 4:33 PM on May 26, 2012
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 4:33 PM on May 26, 2012
We did a no-dancing wedding, and for entertainment we went with board games. Apples to Apples was a particular hit, and it was pretty amazing watching my husband's eighty-year-old grandparents playing with my twenty-something friends. You could do the board game thingat no cost if you have each guest (or just four or five of them) bring their favorite.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 4:35 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 4:35 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
Pin the tail on the "X". With X being whatever theme-appropriate thing you (or an assistant) can draw reasonably well. Shouldn't cost more than the cost of paper and markers (which you may already have).
Also you could plan a scavenger hunt. Use items that your in-town sister and mom already own (or go to a dollar store). It shouldn't be too hard to hide a bunch of stuff around the house (inside and outside). Assign points to everything and divide the guests into teams. Winners get the first slice of cake (or some other very modest award). ((You could make it a picture-hunt, where everyone has to take pictures of things, instead of finding things. Since most people will have a cell-phone cameras should be plentiful).
posted by oddman at 5:44 PM on May 26, 2012
Also you could plan a scavenger hunt. Use items that your in-town sister and mom already own (or go to a dollar store). It shouldn't be too hard to hide a bunch of stuff around the house (inside and outside). Assign points to everything and divide the guests into teams. Winners get the first slice of cake (or some other very modest award). ((You could make it a picture-hunt, where everyone has to take pictures of things, instead of finding things. Since most people will have a cell-phone cameras should be plentiful).
posted by oddman at 5:44 PM on May 26, 2012
Go for games that get people to talk or work together so it's friendly and fun. I love trivia games. Apples to Apples is another good one. Charades and pictionary are fun, too.
posted by elizeh at 10:34 PM on May 26, 2012
posted by elizeh at 10:34 PM on May 26, 2012
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posted by Carol Anne at 4:00 PM on May 26, 2012 [1 favorite]