As a kid, some of my best holiday memories were the times when we gathered around as a family and played board games.

This time meant more than the presents, Christmas decorations, and even my grandma’s cookies, although I loved all of that. It was the face-to-face time spent together laughing that meant so much.

It doesn’t matter if your teen doesn’t want to talk to you as much or if your extended family is dysfunctional. There’s nothing like laughter to end the awkward small talk and bring a family together.

With the holidays fast approaching, I went to the experts, our Moms of Tweens and Teens community, and asked them to share the games that their families enjoy playing the most.

Ten Great Family Board Games For The Holidays

SAY ANYTHING!

Say Anything was designed to start a party as quickly as possible by prompting people to talk about interesting things and make ridiculous statements. If you’re looking for great social interaction and lots of laughs with your immediate family or aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, this is it!

Hedbanz New Updated!

An award-winning, goofy guessing game of “What am I?” that leaves everyone guessing. Ask questions to figure out if the card on your head is a person, place, or object. Are you a famous person in history? Maybe an object was found in the kitchen? Everybody knows the answer but you!

Wits & Wagers

Wits & Wagers has won over 39 awards as the best party game.

It’s a trivia game with a catch that lets you bet on everyone’s answers. A fun question is asked…”How many times does a person blink each day?” The catch is no one knows the answer, and you don’t need to! That’s the fun. You can play individually or in teams, Family Feud style.

Not Parent Approved: Card Game

This is one of our favorite games to play. Bonus: They might actually learn while they’re playing!

Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples is the quintessential party game – you deal the cards, and it’s fast-paced and simple. It’s a guessing game of who can pick the best answer to fit the person who’s the judge. The answers have you rolling on the floor. They can be so silly.

Exploding Kittens

Exploding Kittens is not your typical card game. Another way to explain this game is that it’s Russian Roulette with Kittens or as CNN explained, “Uno… (with) kittens that can kill you.”

Telestrations

The object of the game? To laugh a lot.

Telestrations is the visual version of the classic “telephone game” where you draw what you see and then guess what you saw for hilarious and unpredictable outcomes. It’s miscommunication at its best! No drawing skills are required!

The Game of Things

Hailed as the game that “will make you laugh until you cry.”

It’s the “Who-said-what” game with the attitude that presents players with provocative topics like “THINGS you wouldn’t do for a million dollars,” “THINGS you wish grew on trees,” or “THINGS your parents forgot to tell you.” Everyone writes down whatever comes to mind, reads them out loud, and guesses who said what.

Spontuneous

You hear a word, a song pops into your head, and you spontaneously burst into a tune! For example, can you think of a song with the word “cowboy” in it? How ’bout “heart”? Blurt it out, then! ” A word is given, and it’s a race to blurt out any song containing that word. No singing skill is necessary, and play crosses generations! The cards say things like, “You have 15 seconds to sing at least 5 words from any country song. If you can’t, go back 6 spaces.”

Don’t worry about your voice. Let it rip!

Settlers of Catan

This game may not have you rolling in laughter, but I had to include it on the list because of all the positive reviews from our moms about how much fun this game is and how much their kids love it.

5 More Great Family Board Games!

Pictureka

All kids can play this game and have fun, no matter their age! Pictureka is an exciting, fast-paced game of visual hide-and-seek. In this game, everyone tries to find the images on the cards as fast as they can!

SEQUENCE

Play a card from your hand, and place a chip on a corresponding space on the game board – when you have five in a row, it’s a SEQUENCE. Each player or team tries to score the required number of five-card SEQUENCES before their opponents.

BLANK SLATE

Pick a Word Cue card, write the word you think best completes the phrase, and try to match it to another player’s word without giving a single hint. It’s easy to learn, quick to play, and fun for the whole family; just grab a slate, write a word, and get ready to make a match. Great for large groups or small gatherings!

Trivial Pursuit Family Edition Board Game

Trivial Pursuit Family Edition game has questions for kids and for adults. It’s so fun and challenging that adults might want to use the kids’ cards!

Ransom Notes – The Ridiculous Word Magnet Party Game

The game of hilariously terrible sentences! Players use word magnets to respond to outlandish prompts like “Tell someone you’ve clogged their toilet at a party” with just their limited pool of words. Learn to play in under one minute; even the shyest players will immediately create laugh-out-loud word magnet responses. Just take a few handfuls of word magnets, flip over a prompt card, and start playing — no long instructions to explain!

We hope you purchased some new great family board games to play together! Moms from the Moms of Tweens and Teens community stand by each one! If you know of any other games, please let us know, and we’ll add them to our list!

If you want to shop for gifts for your kids, we have gift guides for girls HERE and HERE, and boys HERE and HERE. We now have our very own Amazon store with more ideas for teacher gifts, plus gift ideas for everyone on your list! Let us take a bit of holiday stress off your plate. Click HERE!

I’m so happy you’re here. I want you to know that this post contains affiliate links. That means that if you click and purchase, I will be compensated for being the helpful reason you found these amazing gifts!

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