Ice Cream Party Games and Activities

Thanks for the great response to our primary ice cream party last week! Several of you requested more specifics about the activities and games we did. I'm going to share the parts I was involved with, and then I'm turning this post over to my friend, Becky, who did a great job making and coordinating the rest of the games.

When the kids arrived they met their teachers under a sign like this that represented a favorite ice cream flavor of their teacher. Here the sunbeams are gathering under the strawberry ice cream sign. They were given corresponding name tags, and later used their signs during one of the rotations to play "pin the cherry on the ice cream cone."

I found the basic ice cream shape on the Silhouette Store and used my Silhouette to cut out the ice cream shapes and cherries for the game. I used my other craft punches to make extra shapes to designate the various flavors of ice cream and then had them all laminated. Can you guess all of the flavors? 

The one at the top of the post is Neopolitan, then Cookies and Cream, Mint Chocolate Chip, Strawberry, and Moosetracks. (We also did Rocky Road and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough--not pictured).

We planned for 10 minutes to gather everyone at the beginning, and then had four 20 min rotations (keeping the party to 90mins.--nice!). Each class had one rotation at the ice cream parlor, two in their classrooms, and one outside. Outside they played a life-sized version of "Guess Who" with another class. Each team would sit on opposite sides of a large curtain and pick a person to be "it". The other team would have to guess who "it" was. The teams would take turns asking yes or no questions until they could guess who was on the other side of the curtain. It was a fun way to get to know each other better! And it gave them some time outside, so they didn't go stir-crazy in their classrooms.

Aside from the "Pin the Cherry" game, Becky was in charge of the classroom activities, so I'm going to let her take it from here... 

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Hi!  My name is Becky Porter and I'm blessed to live just a few blocks away from Kendra.  Occasionally I even get to work with her on a project or party such as our Primary Ice Cream Social.  I know, I know--I am super lucky and I'm constantly inspired by her creativity.


My assignment for the ice cream social was to provide a list of games for the teachers that they could play during extra time with their classes.  Here is a sample of the games I came up with.  These games have been tested and approved by my five children.


A big favorite at my house that gets played often at Porter family reunions and is super easy to customize, Don't Eat Pete is one game that never gets old and is about as simple as they come.  The gameboard is a 3x3 grid of images.  A candy is placed on each image (M & Ms and Skittles work great).  Then, one player is sent out of the room while everyone else agrees on which spot on the grid is going to be "Pete".  The player comes back in and starts picking candies off the grid, one at a time, hoping to get as many eaten as possible before finding "Pete".  When the player starts to pick up the candy in the "Pete" spot, everyone yells, "Don't Eat Pete!" and that player's turn is over.  The game gets played until everyone has had a turn.

{Click here for a copy of the "Don't Eat Pete" gameboard we made and used!}

We also sent out a short survey by e-mail to the teachers to find out more about them.  We asked them questions such as their favorite food, favorite color, favorite sport, and types of pets they owned.  I compiled this information and used clip-art to make a memory match games.  For instance, if the answers to the questions were pizza, red, basketball, and two dogs--I would create two 8.5x11 sheets of paper with a red splotch, two papers with a clip-art image of pizza, two with an image of a basketball, and two with an image of dogs.  After printing the images they were mounted on cardstock and the game was ready to be played on the floor with the same rules as any game of Memory. 


We provided the materials for the Memory game, the Pin the Cherry game, and for Don't Eat Pete.  All other game ideas were compiled onto a list that we e-mailed out ahead of time and also had in paper form at the social.  They were all simple, old-fashioned, and kid-friendly.  Click here to download the list.


Everyone had fun at the ice cream social and more than one teacher thanked us for providing the fun games.  The great thing about these games is that they are easy to use for any party or family function.  And, if you are looking for more kid-friendly ideas you can swing by my blog and check out this post here to get my directions for the latter-day prophets matching game I made for only $1.

Thanks for reading my first guest blog post!  I hope I was able to give you some ideas that will provide hours of fun with minimal stress.

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Thanks so much, Becky! These games are great and can be adapted for most any activity! If you throw your own ice cream party or other event like this for kids, we'd love to hear all about it!