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.

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 3×3 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.

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 8.5×11 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.