Use our free printable What Am I? game cards to play this fun family game!
Sometimes I see those families who go camping on weekends, or do bush walks once a month, or who plan elaborate family movie nights with themed food and activities, and I wish that was us, but it’s not us.
We have four kids ranging in age from six to thirteen, each with their individual likes and dislikes. My husband works a ridiculous rotating shift, and I try to cram in working from home any way I can.
I know spending time together as a family is important, I know it’s worth the effort, it’s just not always easy to find big blocks of time, or come up with something that everyone can do and enjoy.
Even if the stars align and I attempt to plan the perfect family outing, often someone will roll their eyes, or screw up their nose, and ‘team family time’ becomes ‘whining kids and frustrated parent time’.
But just because we are not a weekly-bushwalk-followed-by-a-family-date-night kind of family doesn’t mean our team doesn’t spend time together. It just means we jump in with fun, silly, quick and easy ideas whenever we find a snippet of time.
Right now our favourite quick and easy family game is the very silly ‘What Am I?’ game.
‘What Am I?’ is a cross between celebrity head and twenty questions.
It doesn’t take long to play, so it’s perfect for when you only have a little bit of time but you want to put it to good use with your team. We often play while we are eating dinner!
It’s portable, (great for when you are waiting or travelling) it’s easy enough for little ones to play (with some help) and fun enough to keep older kids engaged. You can be as silly or as serious as you like, and all you need is a scrap of paper and a pen – or our free printable ‘What Am I?’
How to Play the ‘What Am I?’ Game.
Playing the What Am I? game is easy! All you need is a set of our printable What Am I? game cards (see below to download the free printable), and 2 or more people to play!
Each player chooses a card and holds it up against their forehead, or props it up in front of them, without looking at it, but so that the other players can see it.
Each player now takes turns to ask yes or no questions to try to find out what they are.
The rest of the players answer the questions until someone is finally able to guess who or what they are. The first person to guess correctly is the winner!
Free Printable What Am I? Game Cards
These free printable ‘What am I?’ cards have either an animal, a person, a place, or a thing, on them. There is also lots of blank cards so you can add your own ideas.
For little kids, try to stick to things they know really well – people in their family, things they can see where they are etc. For older kids try a few tricker ideas like characters from movies, or places they have never been but would like to go to.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. It will fit to print on US ‘letter sized’ paper, just be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options to allow for printer margins.
Click here to download the What Am I? game cards
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
The What Am I? game is a pretty simple game, nothing fancy, but it’s something we can do as a family, without a huge amount of time or effort, and it makes us laugh.
The other day we were all crying with laughter because Dad just couldn’t figure out that he was a dog, and it’s the little moments like these that go down in our family history, that become stories that get told over and over again, that become the threads that tie us together as a team.
More Fun Family Games and Activities
What’s your favourite easy and fun family game or activity? leave a comment and share your favourite, easy, family game or activity, or check out one of the fun family activity ideas below.
If your family loved this game, try the Christmas What Am I? game!
If your kids love board games check out these fun family games that all ages will enjoy.
Grab some ping pong balls and try these fun family challenges.
Thank you, thank you, thank you… I know you introduced it as a family activity, but … you also just gave me the perfect idea what to do with my ESL class today as a warm up activity, :-).
It used to be easier to get the whole family together on the weekends — living in Austria, we used to go hiking a lot, for example — but then the kids started to prefer to hang out with their friends insteads or just chill… That significantly cut down on our family time, paired with teenagers who preferred to sleep in rather than join us for a nice weekend breakfast…
So, being in China, we’ve had the chance to travel a lot, and that has made up a bit for it. And then, of course, there are also all those little random moments that pop up here and there, :-).
So long,
Corinna
Thank you! I’m a room Mom and I’m bringing these in for the class party.
Thank you so much.
The cards are perfect for families and my English classes.
Your a lifesaver :)
Many thanks from France.
Love this will be using for my after-school program.?
Thanks
Cannot open link.
I’m sorry you are having problems with the link.
All of my printables need to be downloaded directly from the blog post in which they appear. So if you are trying to download the pdf from a direct link somewhere other than my blog, it won’t work.
All my free printables are pdf files and are best downloaded from your computer rather than you phone or tablet. When you click the link it will ask you where to save the file, choose a destination and the download will begin. You need to download and save the file then open it in pdf reading software such as adobe acrobat. The files can not be opened in image editing software.
Hope that helps
I am playing this game at my grandson’s birthday party. I love it.
I am using this as an icebreaker game for my team at work! Thank you!!
Explain color coding please.
There’s no colour coding, each card is a random colour.