The Year of the Horse & Improv Games

Way back at the beginning of February we rang in the Chinese New Year. We had our usual Chinese fare: sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, egg rolls, pot stickers, Chinese chicken salad and mu shu pork. We had a few other things too, but I can't remember what they were! Jason and I have finally figured out how to work our sweet and sour chicken frying extravaganza. It's quite the ordeal, usually three hours of frying chicken into little bite size pieces. Yum. Details are for another post.

Oh...seaweed! We've had seaweed before and every year someone new seems to want to try it out. The kids in Taiwan used to prefer seaweed strips to candy bars. This year was obviously Cana's turn! She was brave and tried it out and then quickly spit it out! I would have done the same thing!

We kept a few things the same this year for decorations - same tablecloths, same table decor, same lanterns and Taiwanese souvenirs and red envelopes of course. Clark helped me put together a Chinese zodiac banner. I want to make it look a little better for next year, but it looked festive enough. The chocolate bars were the prizes for our improv games. More on that if you keep reading...

We decided that we wanted to play a game this year with everyone instead of just sitting around and talking. Jason and I put together some improv games a la Hollywood Game Night and Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Here are some of the ideas that we used just in case you want to host a game night of your own! It's really fun to prepare because so many of the ideas could be from inside jokes or common experiences. And these can be tailored to any age group or interests!

1. Party Quirks - for an idea of how to play the game click here

Scoring - We timed each team and the team who guessed the quirks in the shortest amount of time won the points.

The quirks we used...
-all four teenage mutant ninja turtles hungry for pizza
-wwe wrestler (hulk hogan)
-peyton manning's #1 fan (it was superbowl weekend too)
-someone who keeps stepping in dog poop
-kid in a candy store
-fruit fly in search of a banana
-ninja trying not to be seen

2. In Other Words - for a video of how this game is played click here

Scoring and Game Play: We played two rounds of this game. That meant each person got a chance to say the clue twice. Their team had 60 seconds-ish to guess the answer. If they guessed it, they got a point. If not, no point.

Some of the quotes we used...
-fish are friends, not food
-i see dead people
-may the force be with you
-i'm the king of the world
-e.t. phone home
-there is no crying in baseball
-go ahead, make my day

3 & 4. How Do You Do? and Show Me the Music
These are different games, but we just created one big pile of song titles and sorted them to what we thought would work best. For an example of How Do You Do? click here and for Show Me the Music click here. We modified Show Me the Music into just charades with music titles since we didn't have noise cancelling headphones and such. We used quite a few Disney songs since we thought that some younger kids would be playing.

Scoring and Game Play - we gave each team 2 minutes to guess. They were awarded one point for each correct answer.

Some of the song titles we used:
-waiting for a girl like you
-edge of glory
-mr. roboto
-rocket man
-dancing queen
-america
-it's a small world
-mickey mouse march
-bibbidi bobbidi boo

5. Timeline - for a video on how to play click here
We thought it would be fun to do one round with our favorite Asian actor and another round with Horse movies for the Year of the Horse.

Scoring and Game Play - Each team was given two minutes. They received one point for each correctly placed movie poster.

Jackie Chan movies we used:
First Strike, Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon, The Medallion, Kung Fu Panda, The Spy Next Door and The Karate Kid

Horse movies we used:
Wild Hearts Can't be Broken, Black Beauty, Horse Whisperer, Spirit, Seabiscuit, Flicka, Secretariat

6. Celebrity Name Game - for the version we played, click here
We decided to keep our list of celebrities to tv, movie or sports figures. You could do this with anything though to tailor it to your group's likes.

Scoring and Game Play - Teams had 2 minutes to guess as many celebrities as they could. They received one point for each correct answer.

Some celebrities we used:
-Harrison Ford
-John Travolta
-Natalie Portman
-Adam Sandler
-Lucy Liu
-Jennifer Aniston

I wish I had some pictures of the event. Maybe next year. I really need to be better about photographing a Chinese New Year celebration. It's one of my favorite parties. There's always next year!

We really loved the Game Night except that Jason and I wanted to play instead of just hosting. So next time we may have each family be in charge of bringing an improv game that they would host and then we'll get to play too!