Updated October 27, 2026
Kids from 7 to 14 still love party games, as long as the games don't feel babyish. Plan three to five, alternate loud ones with quiet ones, and give the older kids a way to win. Here are 28 that work indoors with things you already have at home.
Between seven and fourteen, a lot changes. A seven-year-old will happily play freeze dance for twenty minutes. A twelve-year-old will only do it if it's ironic, or if there's a prize worth winning. The games below say which ages they suit best, and most work for a mixed group if you tweak the rules.
For a two-hour party at home, a simple rhythm works: one game while kids arrive, a high-energy game, food and cake, a calmer game, then one last loud one before pickup. Leave gaps. Kids this age like to just hang out with each other, too.
Each game is tagged: Ages 7 to 10, Ages 11 to 14 or All ages, plus Quiet (seated, good after cake), Active (needs some floor space) and No prep.
Good for
Kids show up over 15 minutes. Give the early ones something to do that latecomers can join.
You need: a clear jar full of small candies or pom-poms, slips of paper
How to play: Each guest writes a guess with their name as they arrive. Announce the winner at cake time. The closest guess takes the jar home.
You need: 50 small stickers hidden around one room
How to play: Hide the stickers at kid height before the party. Arrivals hunt for them and stick their finds on a card with their name. Most stickers wins, and everyone keeps theirs.
You need: sticky notes with characters, animals or famous people written on them
How to play: Put a sticky note on each kid's back as they arrive. They walk around asking yes-or-no questions until they guess who they are. Pick names every guest will know, like cartoon characters for the younger ones and athletes or singers for the older ones.
Clear the coffee table, put away anything breakable and these work in a living room or basement.
You need: a speaker and a playlist
How to play: Play music and everyone dances. When the music stops, everyone freezes. Anyone who moves sits out the next song. Last dancer standing wins.
Tip: For older kids, make the dancing the challenge: freeze in the pose of whatever you call out (a superhero, a statue, a bored teenager).
You need: one chair fewer than players, a speaker
How to play: Kids walk around the chairs while music plays. When it stops, everyone grabs a seat. The one left standing is out and takes a chair away. Last one sitting wins.
Tip: Let the kids who are out pause the music. Being the DJ beats sitting on the couch.
You need: inflated balloons
How to play: Each team keeps a balloon in the air without letting it touch the floor, and nobody can hit it twice in a row. Add a second balloon after a minute. Longest team in the air wins.
You need: one balloon per kid, string or yarn
How to play: Tie a balloon to each kid's ankle. On go, everyone tries to pop the others' balloons by stepping on them while protecting their own. Last balloon standing wins. Play on a carpet or in socks, not on a slippery floor.
Tip: Pick up every broken piece of balloon as soon as the game ends, especially if younger siblings are around. See the safety notes.
You need: a broom or pool noodle, two people to hold it, a speaker
How to play: Everyone takes turns walking under the bar leaning backward. After each round, lower it. Touch the bar or the floor with your hands and you're out.
You need: cups, ping-pong balls, cookies, cotton balls, a timer
How to play: Run four or five one-minute challenges: stack 20 cups into a pyramid, move a cookie from forehead to mouth without hands, toss ping-pong balls into cups, move cotton balls from one bowl to another with a spoon in your mouth. Keep score on a whiteboard.
Tip: This is one of the few active games twelve-year-olds will compete in with full effort.
You need: a list or picture clues for each team, small prizes at the end
How to play: Write a list of things to find around the house (something red, a spoon, a sock with a pattern, a book with a dog on the cover). First team to collect everything wins. For older kids, write riddles that lead from one clue to the next.
You need: a house with a few hiding places
How to play: It's hide-and-seek in reverse. One kid hides. Everyone else counts, then searches. Whoever finds the hider squeezes into the spot with them, quietly. The last kid to find the group hides next.
Tip: Tell the kids which rooms are off-limits before you start.
You need: two or three rolls of toilet paper per team
How to play: One kid on each team is the mummy. The others wrap them in toilet paper as fast as they can. Best-wrapped mummy in three minutes wins, judged by the birthday kid.
Everyone has eaten too much sugar. These keep kids in one place for a while.
You need: a bingo card for each kid, markers, a list or bowl of numbers to call
How to play: Call numbers one at a time; kids mark them. First to complete a line shouts bingo and wins. For younger kids, use pictures or words from the party theme instead of numbers. Play a few rounds with different patterns: a line, four corners, a full card.
If you would rather not be the caller, our kids' birthday party bingo show plays on your TV with two hosts and an announcer, calls every guest by first name and adds dance breaks between rounds. More on that below.
Tip: Have one small prize per round and a box of extras, so the kid who never wins still goes home with something.
You need: a small stack of paper and a pencil for each kid
How to play: Everyone writes a sentence on the top sheet and passes the stack to the left. The next kid draws that sentence, folds the paper to hide the words, and passes it on. The next one writes what they think the drawing shows. At the end, unfold each stack and read how far it drifted.
You need: a bowl of slips with movies, animals or actions
How to play: One kid acts out the word without talking while their team guesses. One minute per turn. Let kids write some of the slips themselves.
You need: a pillowcase or cloth bag, 10 household objects
How to play: Kids take turns reaching into the bag without looking and guessing what they're touching. Keep it to things like a spoon, a pinecone, a sponge or a toy car. Nothing sharp, nothing slimy unless you want screaming.
You need: a deck of cards, spoons (one fewer than players)
How to play: Deal four cards to each player and put the spoons in the middle. Players pass cards around the circle, trying to collect four of a kind. When someone gets it, they quietly grab a spoon, and everyone else scrambles for the rest. The player left without a spoon gets a letter; spell SPOON and you're out.
You need: printer paper, markers, painter's tape to mark a line
How to play: Everyone folds and decorates a plane. Three rounds: farthest flight, longest time in the air, and best design. Three winners means more kids win something.
Eleven- to fourteen-year-olds want games that feel like something teenagers would play. Let them take charge where you can.
You need: nothing
How to play: Each kid says three things about themselves, two true and one made up. Everyone votes on the lie. It's an easy icebreaker when not everyone knows each other.
You need: a list of silly either-or questions
How to play: Read a question, like "Would you rather have a pet dragon or a pet unicorn?" Kids move to one side of the room or the other. Ask one kid from each side to defend their choice.
You need: role cards (two werewolves, one seer, the rest villagers), one adult or kid to narrate
How to play: Everyone gets a secret role. At night, eyes closed, the werewolves pick a villager to remove. During the day, everyone discusses and votes on who they think is a werewolf. Villagers win by finding the werewolves first.
Tip: Older kids often ask to play this again and again. Let the birthday kid narrate the second round.
You need: a speaker, a phone to film if the kids want it
How to play: Each group picks a song and has ten minutes to rehearse, then performs. The birthday kid and a parent judge. Let the kids choose the songs, but preview the playlist for lyrics.
You need: a chain of five puzzles that lead to each other (a riddle, a code, a hidden key, a combination lock box)
How to play: Each clue unlocks the next. The final clue opens a box with the party favors. Give a hint card every five minutes if a team gets stuck.
Tip: It takes an evening to set up, but it's the game the kids will still talk about at school on Monday.
You need: one phone per team (a parent's is fine), a list of photos to take
How to play: Teams race to take photos from the list: the whole team in the air, a human pyramid, a recreated famous painting, the team making the birthday kid's age with their bodies. Show the photos on the TV at the end.
Tip: Keep the photos on a parent's phone, and ask before sharing any of them online.
Not every kid wants to compete. A table with an activity gives them somewhere to be, and doubles as the party favor.
You need: plain cupcakes, frosting, sprinkles, candies, plates
How to play: Each kid decorates two cupcakes, one to eat and one to enter. The birthday kid picks the winner in categories like most colorful and most creative.
Tip: Check for food allergies on the invitation, and keep the ingredient labels handy for parents.
You need: embroidery floss or beads and elastic cord, scissors, tape
How to play: Set out the supplies and a couple of simple patterns. Kids make one for themselves and one for the birthday kid.
You need: a kit made for kids, or clear glue, baking soda and saline solution, small containers, food coloring
How to play: Follow the kit's recipe. Let each kid choose colors and mix-ins and take theirs home in a labeled container.
Tip: Cover the table with a plastic cloth. Slime finds carpet.
You need: a TV and karaoke videos, a microphone if you have one
How to play: Let kids queue up songs and sing solo or in groups. Younger kids love it outright; older kids often join once one brave kid goes first.
Running games for ten kids while also lighting candles and cutting cake is a lot for one parent. Bingo Bingley is a bingo show for kids ages 7 to 14 that plays on your TV from a laptop. Two hosts, best friends Bingley and Bella, keep the jokes going while an announcer calls the numbers, and every guest hears their own first name. Between rounds there are dance breaks and freeze moments, so kids are up and moving, not just sitting with a marker.
It's made for parents: no account to create, nothing to install, and the jokes are kid-clean. The hosts are AI voices; we write every line with help from AI tools and check each one. The songs play from YouTube, so without YouTube Premium you may see an ad before a song; the show waits up to five seconds and then moves on. Have a look at the kids' birthday party bingo show or read how it works.
Bingley calls a freeze.
Balloons are a classic, but watch younger siblings. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends that children under eight not play with uninflated balloons without supervision, and its warning label says to throw away broken balloons at once, because the pieces are easily sucked into the throat. CPSC
For active games, clear the floor, play in socks or sneakers rather than on slippery floors, and keep the number of kids in one room manageable. For food games, check every guest's allergies first.
Three to five for a two-hour party, alternating active and quiet games, with free time in between. Have one backup game in case something flops.
Minute to win it, an indoor scavenger hunt, Sardines, bingo, Telephone Pictionary and a paper airplane contest. Games with a challenge and a clear winner work better than games that feel like little-kid games.
Werewolf, Spoons, a homemade escape room, a lip sync battle, a photo challenge and Two truths and a lie. Let them run parts of it themselves.
Freeze dance, limbo, Sardines, charades, Would you rather, Two truths and a lie and Telephone Pictionary. All you need is music, paper or nothing at all.
It helps. Give a small prize to each game's winner and make sure every guest wins at least one thing across the party, or send everyone home with a small favor bag.