53 Fun Family Games for Thanksgiving You Need To Try This Year

If you have one or two decks of cards, you have hours of entertainment ahead. Card games are a great way to keep the family engaged and playing together, and these card games are perfect for groups to play on Thanksgiving. All you need for all of the games on this list is one 52-card deck.

Are you prepared for Christmas cards after Thanksgiving? Need advice? Check out Amphy’s 101 ‘Merry Christmas’ wishes to Steal for Your Holiday Greeting Card

1. Hearts

The main goal of Hearts is to avoid accumulating points, which are generally earned by taking certain cards like Hearts and the Queen of Spades, during the course of multiple rounds of play. It’s a great game to play on Thanksgiving because it is a social card game that encourages friendly competition among family and friends, and its rules are easy enough for most people to learn quickly. The game can be found at Hearts.Land and on iOS / Google Play, making it accessible for everyone to enjoy without needing a physical deck of cards.

2. Spades

The main objective of Spades is to accurately bid and win a certain number of “tricks” with a partner, based on the strength of your hand and strategic play. Spades is an excellent game for Thanksgiving gatherings because it encourages teamwork and interaction, making it an engaging and fun activity for family members to bond over. For those who don’t have a deck of cards on hand, the game can be conveniently played online at Spades.co and on iOS and Google Play platforms.

3. Old Maid

Old Maid is a game that works best if you only have your immediate family over because it only works with two to six players. Old Maid is one of the most popular card games in the world and is an excellent game for groups with or without children.

4. Memory

Memory is a fun game for large groups and can be played with a standard 52-card deck. Just make sure that you only grab pairs of cards before you begin!

For an extra fun version of memory that can include the whole group, you can set out two separate memory boards with two separate decks. The goal in this version is to match identical cards from the two boards.

5. 31

The goal of 31 is to get players to 31 points. It’s a great card game for little ones that could use practice adding up numbers over Thanksgiving break. If you want to avoid the gambling aspects of 31, you can play with candy pieces or pennies.

6. Slap Jack

While Slap Jack can only support 2 to 6 players, it is a classic game that can bring energy levels back up after dinner. It’s also perfect for families with small kids because it doesn’t involve lots of strategy or math.

7. House of Cards

House of cards is technically a card game. To play, have everyone involved try to build the biggest house of cards they can… and that’s it. See who in your group can make the biggest house of cards before it falls, or have everyone work together on one large castle of cards.

8. Spoons

Spoons is a game that works well with larger groups. To play, put spoons in the center of the table equal to the number of players minus one. The goal is to get four cards of the same kind (all fours, Kings, etc.). Pass each player four cards and place the rest of the cards in a pile next to one player.

The player next to the pile picks up a card and decides if it will help them get four of a kind. If it will, they can exchange that card for one in their hand and pass the discarded card to the person next to them. If not, they can pass the newly drawn card to the next player.

Each player repeats this process, choosing cards to exchange and passing them to the person next to them until one person gets four of a kind. If you get four of a kind, you grab a spoon.

When one player has a spoon, the game ends, and it becomes a free-for-all to see who can get one of the remaining spoons. Whoever doesn’t grab a spoon fast enough gets eliminated. Then, the number of spoons decreases, and the game continues until there’s only one winner.

9. 52-Card Pickup

You can always have children play a little 52-card pickup at the end of any card game.

To make sure that it works as a clean-up technique, tell the kids that they can get a point for each card they pick up and put in a neat pile facing the right direction.

The points-for-neatness strategy will help keep your cards from getting bent out of shape.

10. Egyptian Ratscrew

To play this game, pass cards out until the entire deck is gone. Players should keep their cards in a pile in front of them, face down. Starting with the player to the dealer’s left, each player should pull the first card from their deck and play it face-up in the middle of the table.

If the card is a regular number card, the person to their left plays their card on top. When a face card (or ace) is played, the next player must also play a face or ace card. The previous player gets the whole pile on the table if the card is a regular number card.

The goal of Egyptian Ratscrew is to get all of the cards from the table. Players who cannot put down a card are eliminated from the game.

11. Make-shift Uno

You can play Uno without a real Uno deck by assigning a reverse, skip, wildcard, and plus-two to various face cards. The jack might be a skip; the queen might be a wildcard, etc.- just don’t forget which is which!

12. I Doubt It (Or BS)

To play ‘I doubt it,’ pass out all the cards in the deck. Whoever has the ace of spades in their hand goes first. That player lays their ace of spades on the table.

The player to their left then lays down their 2s, face down. If they don’t have any 2s, they can lay down another card (or two!) and pretend it is a 2. Then the next player lays down 3s, face down, the next player 4s, and so on.

If at any point someone at the table thinks a player is lying about what they have in their hand, they can say, “I doubt it!” The person who laid their hand will flip over the cards they put down. If they did lie about what they put down, they must take the whole pile. If the doubter were wrong, they would take the entire stack.

The first person to run out of cards wins. The other players can keep going to compete for other places if they want to. This game can be played with two decks if you have a particularly large group of people.

You may also like: How to Serve Wine: A Beginner’s Guide to Becoming a Sommelier if you’re hosting Thanksgiving this year!