[Children’s Club] Easy and fun indoor games. Exciting party games
Looking for active games you can enjoy in a quiet indoor setting? Even on cold or rainy days, playtime can turn into a fun, smile-filled experience when you’re with a kids’ group or friends.
Here are indoor games with simple rules that you can start right away—moving your body while engaging your mind.
From music-based games to activities with quiz elements, these ideas are all about shared excitement and anticipation.
You can freely adapt them to different group sizes and ages.
Give them a try and create some treasured memories!
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Quiz, Mystery, and Puzzle-Solving Games (21–30)
Birthday line
Let’s all connect and play! Here’s an idea for a game called “Birthday Line.” The rules are simple: everyone lines up in a single row in order from the earliest birthday to the latest.
It sounds easy, but there’s an important rule—you’re not allowed to talk while lining up.
Use gestures to get into the right order without making mistakes! If you take your time, you’ll always succeed, but adding a time limit makes it more exciting because everyone starts to think, “Let’s just line up for now!” and rushes.
Give it a try with a large group!
Simple games using tools (1–10)
Candy fishing game
It’s a “Candy Fishing Game” that combines kids’ favorite sweets with fishing! You’ve probably seen it at festival stalls lately, and it’s super easy to play.
Fill a kiddie pool or similar container with candies that have magnets attached, then use a fishing rod made from a toy or disposable chopsticks to reel them in! To amp up the excitement, you can put the candies in opaque bags so players can’t see what they’re getting, or set a time limit and let them catch as many as they can.
If you go with the all-you-can-fish style, be sure to prepare plenty of individually wrapped candies.
PET bottle darts
Bottle-cap darts you can play safely and have fun with, using a plastic bottle and disposable chopsticks.
Regular darts, where you throw a needle-tipped stick at a target, can be a bit worrying for kids, but with bottle-cap darts, they can play with peace of mind! Here’s how: prepare a large plastic bottle of about 2 liters, and try to drop a chopstick into the small opening at the bottle’s mouth.
When you drop the chopstick, don’t move close to the opening—drop it from around your waist height.
It may look easy at first, but dropping it from waist height into that tiny opening is actually pretty tricky! You can even make it a competition to see who can land the most chopsticks in the bottle.
Name Bingo
When you think of bingo, you probably picture receiving a card with numbers, marking holes where randomly called numbers appear, and clearing the game when you complete a full line—vertical, horizontal, or diagonal.
This “Name Bingo” is played the same way, but instead of numbers, you use participants’ names.
It helps you remember friends’ names and can be a great icebreaker.
Since players choose the names themselves and write them on their cards, having a prepared list of names makes the process smoother.
Cup-standing race
It’s a simple game where you throw a paper cup upward, and if it lands upright on the floor, you succeed.
Having players throw it above head height makes control more difficult and prevents cheating, such as just dropping it straight down without throwing.
Because the cup is so light, it’s affected by air resistance as it falls, causing it to move differently than expected—another fun aspect.
Whether you throw it with force or give it a gentle lift, keep trying to find the optimal motion through repeated attempts.
Mission game
The directives and missions issued in the hugely popular TV show “Run for Money” really get your heart racing, don’t they? How about hosting a “Mission Game,” a milder version of those missions, at your Christmas party? Examples of missions include stacking paper cups into three tiers, threading a string through a toy needle, or quickly changing an outfit on a doll.
Be sure to design missions suited to the seniors and children who will play the game.
And if completing a mission earns candy or prizes, it’ll be even more exciting!
Fruits Basket
The classic game Fruit Basket, popular with children, starts by choosing one player to be “it.” The other kids are grouped by several fruit names and sit on chairs arranged in a circle.
Once the “it” player stands in the center, the game begins! When the player in the middle calls out a fruit, the children assigned to that fruit stand up and move to a different chair.
The player in the middle also tries to sit in a chair, so the child left without a seat becomes the next “it.” There’s also a variation called “Anything Basket,” where instead of fruits you can pick any theme you like—such as “people wearing skirts” or “those who had bread for breakfast.” “Anything Basket” is recommended for older kids!