Equipment: none!
In this game every player in turn performs at the front of the group. The audience suggest a suitable topic for which they then have to make up a short 30 second jingle. This is normally in the form of a song, often featuring atrocious rhyming couplets made up on the spot.
Good topics include the dog, the dad’s cooking, the school, or even miscellaneous categories such as pies, pavements, cars or dinosaurs, depending on the interests of the player.
An alternative way to play is to have more than one player do the jingle, so player 2 might add the backing vocal or an introduction ‘introducing the wonderful Newtown Primary School’ followed by the main jingle ‘Newtown Primary school! Ma ma ma ma ma Newtown Primary school ma ma ma mam mam Its so wonderfully cool! ma ma ma ma, Newtwon Primary Schoool’ then the player 2 says ‘Newtown primary school only £2.99 from most good shops, terms and conditions apply’. Such composite jingles require a little more planning but can be amusing.
There is also scope within this format to make up your own topic. One of the best we ever did was for ‘Undigestable food’. My daughter introduced this by trilling ‘Undigestable food!’ followed by me speaking in a radio voice ..’undigestable food, the great new food by fat busters, eat it and it goes straight through you!..Yes you’ll be eating yorkshire puddings and pooing yorkshire puddings! ! A great way to lose weight and save money-undigestible food is completely reusable!’ Followed by my son… ‘can cause symptoms of indigestion(my daughter groans) Only £3.99 fro most good chemists’.
OK OK, so it was funny at the time. At least we thought it was mildly entertaining. Anyway the point was we worked as a team to do something vaguely creative, albeit directed by me, which isn’t necessarily the point of family time.
At least I manged to get as far as game number 3 before using the word ‘poo’. More to follow.