"Pin The Tail on The Donkey" Genre of Homemade Games

Way back in the middle of the previous century, when I was a kid, "Pin The Tail on The Donkey" was a standard party game. My mother bought us some for my kids and their friends to play, too. It was a regular feature in the birthday parties I organized along with unattractive and unfashionably "healthy" birthday cakes.

As a savta, grandma, I reprised the genre as our traditional Family Chanuka Party Game by taking a large piece of oak-tag and drawing a chanukiya Chanuka Menorah sans candles or flames. Then I'd cut out candles/flames, and get the whole family to join in playing a version of "Pin The Tail on The Donkey."

Recently my daughter created a new version of the famous classic "Pin The Tail on The Donkey" for a birthday by drawing a birthday cake with candles sans flames. I cut out flames, and the children, blindfolded of course, had to try to stick the flame on the candles.

For some strange reason, most likely the result of the "Children Shouldn't Feel Like Failures" culture, instead of laughing at badly placed flames, they coached each other:

"A bit higher"
"To the right"
"To the left"
"Lower"
"That's perfect"

The kids had fun, but they didn't learn to plan and calculate in the dark to develop survival skills, which is the real purpose of the game.

You can take the basic idea and make up a game for children, teens or adults. It could be a lot of fun and very low tech, too.