Fun and (party) games

Draw on your writing group’s memories in these children’s party-themed prompts and activities from Julie Phillips

We all have our favourite party games from our childhoods: pass the parcel, musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, to name but a few. When you think of them, or see children playing them today, our memories of our own childhood parties can stir up a minefield of emotions. The intensity of those emotions and memories, seen through the lens of adulthood, with decades between the event and the present day, might have warped and changed, and it is these emotions that we are going to tap into this month to inspire your writing.

Activity 1: Pass the parcel

Your group are going to take a trip down memory lane and play pass the parcel. Have a ready-wrapped parcel, with several layers, and place within each layer an object that might spark ideas for writing based on their childhood memories, for instance, a marble, a pebble, jacks, a tea spoon, a thimble, old fashioned sweets – anything that group members might have encountered as part of their childhood.

The idea is to ask them to hold that item in their hands, close their eyes, and see what comes into their head. Were parties a happy occasion for them, or were they the opposite? Did they feel left out by not getting many invitations to parties? Perhaps their family moved around a lot and they didn’t stay long enough in any one place to make friends and attend birthday parties.

Ask them to write down what the item means to them and the residual feelings they have towards childhood parties now. This is a great activity to spark conflict in a story idea. Maybe their older siblings had better parties in their eyes and they were desperate to join in but weren’t allowed, or they were only one of a few children who didn’t receive invites to another child in their class’s birthday party. These events can stir strong emotions well into adulthood.

Activity 2: Pin the tail on the writing prompt donkey

This is another classic children’s party game, still popular today, which we can plunder for more writing ideas. Have a picture of a donkey on a wall (you can draw your own simple outline of one), and on it have writing prompts written on various parts of the donkey, each individually covered up by a piece of paper secured with blue tack so they can’t see the prompt. Blindfold each game player and ask them to approach the donkey and pull off one of the pieces of paper, revealing their prompt.

Once all game players have a prompt (it could be an image or a word, a name, a colour, anything at all), they could spend ten to fifteen minutes writing something based on that prompt, tied in to the theme of childhood parties.

Activity 3: Musical chairs

For this childhood party game, the idea is to have several chairs in double rows with one at each end in a line. Each member sits on a chair. As the music plays, the game players walk round the chairs whilst one is removed at a time. When the music stops, the players try and sit down on a seat. The chairs will have a quote in an envelope from either a famous piece of literature, or a famous author, taped under the seat. The person sitting on that seat must remove the quote from its envelope in the presence of the non-seated person so that they both read it at the same time. The first of them to shout out the source of the quote stays in the game. No conferring or cheating! Then the game continues until only two players remain and the player shouting out the answer wins. This is a fun way of testing the group’s knowledge of literature and authors. Each player who answered correctly can then write a short piece that is children’s party-themed, based on their quote. Those who didn’t win a quote can write a short piece based on their own memories of children’s parties.

The world of children’s parties is ripe for picking all those delicious fruit of ideas from its branches. No two parties are alike and it is interesting to attend parties of children that are in your family or family friends, if invited, as the level of excitement and energy reaches volcanic eruption scale. What could be the trigger points for conflict? Overtired, over-excited children on a sugar rush? Parental tension? Disapproving of their child’s friends’ behaviour or not getting on with their parents? Once you have that information, this activity can take you into a variety of different directions with your writing as you remember parties of old and how they made you feel. You might want to play some of them at your next writing group’s party.