Fun Christmas Games for Kids to Experience Christmas With Their Senses

Christmas is a feast for all the senses! These 5 Christmas games for kids send imaginative children into the land of Christmas, where there’s all sorts to smell, touch, guess and hear!

For children, the Christmas season is full of exciting stories, smells, sounds and surprises. There is so much to experience – from baking biscuits together, making presents to decorating the Christmas tree. There are great Christmas films to watch – but the time spent together is even more imaginative and enjoyable with Christmas games.

Christmas – you can smell it, taste it, touch it and even hear it! How do you do that? With these 5 Christmas games for kids and the whole family, young and old alike can experience Christmas with all their senses. 🙂

The 5 Most Beautiful Christmas Games for Kids for the Senses

Christmas Games for Kids #1 – Guessing Game Scent of Christmas

This is what you need

• Same-sized tins, spice jars or screw-top jars (e.g. empty yoghurt jars)
• Scented samples: e.g. cinnamon, cloves, marzipan, vanilla bean, aniseed, biscuits/ speculoos, dominoes, cocoa powder, pine sap, beeswax, incense, frankincense, orange peel, roasted almonds, ground hazelnuts, non-alcoholic fruit punch, scented oil
• Eye pads

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Christmas is a feast for the senses – at Christmas time we feast on aromatic biscuits and festive food, marvel at the festively decorated home and illuminated streets and most importantly: have the smell of roasted almonds, festive roast, cinnamon, vanilla, fir crackers, candle wax and incense in our noses.

There are many scents that go with Christmas! And one of the most beautiful Christmas games for children uses the sense of smell to awaken the anticipation of Christmas and bring on the Christmas spirit.

How it works

Prepare 10-20 different scent samples and put each of them in a jar or small box that you can seal so that the scent doesn’t disappear so quickly. For example, a crumbled cinnamon star, a cut vanilla pod and a sprig of pine sap.

The children all sit around a table, you blindfold them and hand the first tin to the first child who smells it. The child passes it on to the next child until everyone has smelled it. Now you ask what was in the jar and all the children can shout their guess out loud into the room. Each child who guesses the scent correctly gets a point. Now it is the turn of the next scent.

The child who scores the most points and guesses the most scents gets a small prize. Preferably something fragrant, like a bag of homemade biscuits or tangerines and nuts.

Christmas Games for Kids #2 – Sensory Smell Memory

What you need

• Small jars of the same size that you can poke holes in the lid of or spice jars
• Samples of Christmas fragrances (see Christmas Games for Kids #1)
• 5 cm x 5 cm cards
• Print out the motifs representing the smells

How it works

When I was a child, I was passionate about playing Smell Lotto with my sister. It’s a parlour game in which we sniffed at all the jars of aromas and had to match a jar to a picture. And that wasn’t easy at all – even after the 20th time of playing!

You can easily make a scent memory yourself. You need 20-30 scent samples and aromas that match Christmas and fill a small box with one scent at a time. Poke small holes in the lid with a needle to smell them. Number the bottom and make a note of which number stands for which fragrance.

Tip: You can also fill at least 10 scent samples with scented oil-soaked cotton wools for more difficult exotic scents! For example, sandalwood, baked apple, etc.!

After you have filled all the jars with scents, look for the matching pictures on the Internet, print them out, stick them on 5 cm x 5 cm cardboard cards and fix the stack of cards with a piece of household rubber.

The children lay out the motif cards face down in rows like in a memory game and place the bottles with the smells around them. Now they each take turns to turn over 1 card of their choice and sniff a bottle. They always put the memory card and the bottle back in the same place. If the child has no idea what the scent might be, they can look at the list of numbers to see what the scent is. When they have found a matching pair, they take the card and the scent out of the game and collect both in front of them.
The winner is the one who has found the most pairs.

Here is a purchase version of a good fragrance memory:

Christmas Games for Kids #3 – Feel Christmas

This is what you need

• Blindfold
• Christmas items: e.g. angel wings, tangerine, walnut, orange, nutcracker, fir branch, reindeer stuffed animal, Christmas figures, ribbon, Christmas tree decorations, tinsel, candle etc., but no sharp objects!
• Jute bag, sack or Christmas hat

How it works

The children sit down in a circle and the first child puts on a blindfold. Now he or she is allowed to reach into the burlap bag / Santa hat and carefully take out an object. They feel it and describe aloud what they feel and make a guess as to what it is. If they guess the object correctly, they get a point. The next child blindfolds himself and it is his turn.

As in the well-known game “I’m packing my suitcase”, each child whose turn it is now first counts up the object(s) that the children have previously named – regardless of whether they were right or wrong! So each child has to remember the objects and also the wrong hints in the order and completes the row with his or her felt Christmas object.

If a child does not list the previous items in the correct order or does not come up with an item, then the game is over and a new round begins.

The winner is the child who has correctly palpated the most items – for example, he or she may take one of the items that the children have taken out of the sack as the winning prize and keep it. All the other items go back into the sack.

Christmas Games for Children #4 – Christmas Hide and Seek With Sounds

This is what you need

• Gift wrapping paper
• 1 bell
• 1 nutcracker
• 1 tin of biscuits
• With more children: More Christmas items that make sounds

How it works

All the children gather in a room. On the table are various Christmas objects that can be used to make sounds such as a nutcracker, a tin of biscuits, etc. There should be 1 item less than children playing along. At the signal Ho-ho-ho!, each child grabs an item. The child who goes away empty-handed looks at which child took which object and remembers it. Now he or she leaves the room.

All the other children now look for a hiding place and hide with their object. The room is darkened, the light is turned off and the child who was searching is allowed to enter.
All the children now call attention to themselves from time to time in their hiding places by ringing their bell, cracking their nutcracker, biting into a biscuit or rustling the wrapping paper. The searching child follows these sounds. As soon as they have found another child, they try to guess which object it is and which child it is based on the sound.

There are 2 winners in this game! Once in each round, the child who was found last wins. And once each child has had a turn to search, the winner is the one who recognised the most objects by the sounds and remembered best which child has that object.

Christmas Games for Children #5 – Gold Angel or Reindeer?

This is what you need

• Christmas items – ideal are Erzgebirge figures, reindeer, Father Christmas, bells, Christmas tree tops, incense burners, angels, straw stars, candles, Christmas tree decorations such as Christmas tree balls, cones, glass birds etc.
• Torch

How to do it

All the children sit down on the floor on an open space – for example, the living room carpet. Now have the children all close their eyes and you place 10 Christmas objects in a row, spaced apart, in their centre. For example, a smoking man, a golden angel, a fir branch, a Christmas tree ball, a reindeer, a straw star and a candle.

Now you put out the light and the children can open their eyes. You shine the beam of the torch on the first object and slowly move on to the second object, then to the third and so on. The children memorise the order of the objects as best they can. Then the torch is switched off. Who has recognised all the objects and counts them in the correct order?

Looking for Christmas games for adults or Christmas gift ideas? At Abenteuer Freundschaft, you can also browse year-round leisure tips for activities with friends, your partner or your family.

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