• Assemble a tray with 15 to 20 small items or 'relics'. For example: a spoon, a pen, a marble, a crayon, and so forth.

• Cover the tray and items with cloth.

• Uncover the tray for 20 seconds. During that time all players will 'gaze' at the tray and try to remember as many items as they can.

• Then recover the tray after the 20 seconds.

• Each player has 30 seconds to write down all the items that she can remember.

• Once the 30 seconds is up call off each item on the tray.

• Each player will cross out an item if any one else has written that item down on her list as well. For example - if two players have written 'spoon' down then 'spoon' is a disqualified item.

• The player with the most items on her list that haven't been crossed out is the winner!

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Find The Farthing:

• Divide the guests into two teams.

• The teams will stand on the opposite ends of a table.

• The first team starts by passing a coin (a quarter will do) under the table to one of its members. Now this should be done so that the other team is unsure of which member in the first team actually has the coin.

• The second team has to guess which member from the first team has the coin.

• When the second team thinks they know who has the coin, they say "Hands Aloft", and the first team has to hold all their hands up with their fists balled.

• Next, the second team says, "1.. 2.. 3.. Flatten the Farthing", and all team 1 members have to quickly bring their hands down on the table and flatten their palms. Team 1 wants to be careful not to let the coin tap against the table and make sound that gives the coin holder away.

• If the second team guesses correctly, they get the coin and a turn at hiding it.

• If they guess incorrectly, then the first team hides the coin a second time.

• To win: a team must be the first to successfully hide the coin 6 times!

  Note: You may want to flip a coin to see which team goes first at hiding the coin.

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Pass The Parcel:

• First place a chocolate bar or some other gift in a small box.

• Then wrap it with a single layer of wrapping paper, and attach some silly instruction to that layer. (A silly instruction might be to taste mustard, or to wear your hat on your elbow)

• Add another layer of wrapping paper to the package, with a second silly instruction attached.

• Continue adding layers of wrapping paper with silly instructions until you have about twice as many layers as there will be guests at the party.

• To play the game, have your guests sit in a circle, and begin passing the 'parcel'. Now remember under all those layers of silly instructions there is a prize to be won.

• Play some lively music while the package is being passed. Then stop the music.

• The guest holding the parcel has to perform the silly instruction attached to that layer of wrapping paper.

• Resume passing the parcel after the silly instruction is carried out.

• The music stops and a layer of wrapping is removed and its silly instruction carried out.

• Continue passing the parcel until all the layers except the last one is removed.

• The final round is played when the parcel is passed and the music stops. The player holding the parcel has to perform the last silly task, but as a reward gets the prize in the box!

  Note: Players are not removed from the game when they get left holding the parcel. In this way they can still have a chance to win the prize in the final parcel-pass.

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Slap The Queen:

• A standard 52-card playing card deck is used.

• The cards are delt out one by one to every player, so that each player has a little stack in front of her.

• Without looking at the cards, each players puts their cards into a neat little stack in front of her -- cards face down.

• Beginning on the dealers left, each player lifts one card from his pile and places it face up in the center of the table. When this is done the player must 'play' the card in such a way that they don't see it sooner than anyone else.

• When the card played in the center is a queen, the first player to slap her hand down on it wins the queen and all the cards beneath it..

• If a player accidently slaps a card that is not a queen, then she must give a card - face down - to the player of that card.

• The game continues until one player has won all of the cards.

  Note: The game should proceed at a rapid pace so that a revealed queen is a surprise and every one has a good shot at slapping it!

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Halt:

• Each player draws 5 lines on her sheet of notebook paper. These five lines should create 6 columns on the paper.

• Write each of these categories at the top of every column on the page: color, flower, fruit, TV shows, movies, and Total.

• One of the players starts the game by reciting the alphabet.

• The player next to the left calls 'Halt!'.

• Whatever the letter of the alphabet being recited when the player calls stop, will be the first letter of a word each player will write into every category on her paper. For instance, if "F" is the letter stopped on, then the entries on a page might be: color=Fusia, flower=Forget-Me-Not, Fruit=Fig, TV show=Funniest Home Videos, movie=Fiddler on The Roof.

• The first player to finish her list, calls 'Halt!' again, and all pencils are put down, whether or not they are finished writing.

• Points are awarded to answers this way: If no one else wrote your answer you get 100 points for that answer. If only one other person wrote your answer you get 75 points for that answer. If only two other people wrote your answer then you get 50 points for that answer. If 3 other people wrote your answer then you get 25 points for that answer. If 4 or more people wrote your answer then you only get 10 points for that answer.

• If you could not think of an answer for a column, or if you didn't have time to finish a column, then you don't get any points for that column.

• Points are totalled for each round.

• Players take turns reciting the alphabet and calling halt.

• The player with the most total points at the end of 5 rounds wins!

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