Elephant Nose

I made up this game when my son Devin was little. We used to play it at birthday parties and such. I sometimes play it in classrooms when I visit schools. You’ll need a roll of masking tape. Scotch tape works but masking tape is best. Have each player cut off a small piece of tape, about two inches long and make it into a loop by sticking one end to the other end. Then place this loop on your nose so that it sticks well. Now you are ready to play Elephant Nose. Next, make pairs and let the two contestants approach each other, nose first, until the tape comes into contact. (no hands!) Then, pull away. You will notice that one of them retains the “nose” of the other. Next, all of the players who have two loops of tape pair off, and so on until you have one person with a very long ELEPHANT NOSE . He or she is the winner. Great for all ages from about 3 on up.

Here is a photo of our son playing with one of his friends when he was only three years old.  Looks like he was about to lose to his older friend Sam.

If you’ve made up a game, send it to us.
We’d love to share it. Original games only, please.

Hat Trick Poker

We invented this game as a family when Devin was about 9 years old.  It can be made into a learning game with matching cards, etc.  But here is the version we made up to play together.  All you need is a deck of cards, a large hat with a brim, a chair, and some paper and pencil for scoring.  In its original version it is for all ages from 8 years on up.

Start by placing a large hat with a brim on a chair in the middle of the room.  Either sit on the couch and throw from there, (you can lean out, but you have to be sitting on the couch) or you can put a line on the floor with tape so players will know they have to throw the card from the line.  It’s fun to change the distance of the hat from the line to meet the needs of younger players, or just to increase or decrease difficulty.  Cards must be in the hat to score.  On the brim doesn’t count. (But it’s fun to knock cards in that have been sitting there).

Play: First player takes a turn and throws an entire deck of cards into a hat, one card at a time, and attempts to make the best poker hand they can with the cards they’ve managed to land in the hat.  As they throw each card, the other players must pay attention and help score because if the person throwing gets the first card they throw into the hat, they get a point!  And if they get several cards in the hat in a row they get a point for each consecutive one.  But that’s not all.  There are other special cards that  will give you points as well.   Scoring system is outlined below. Winner is the one with the most points per round.  That’s right, just because you win the poker hand, doesn’t always mean you win the round.

After the first player has thrown every card in the deck, you write down their best poker hand (let’s say the best hand they could make with the cards they landed in the hat was a pair of queens).   You also write down their other points, and how many cards total they got in the hat.  The player that gets the most cards in the hat in this round gets another point.

When scoring of the first player has been completed, all the cards are gathered up and handed to player number 2, and so on until everyone has had a turn throwing all the cards and the round is complete.

Scoring