50 Hilarious Minute to Win It Games For Kids
![50 Hilarious Minute to Win It Games For Kids Test patience, agility, and speed in a quick spoon race.](https://static.mommypoppins.com/styles/image960x650/s3/spoon-race-canva-.png)
Minute to Win It games are perfect for family game nights, kids' birthday parties, holiday gatherings, and any other time you need inexpensive, crowd-pleasing entertainment. They're great for all ages, able to be scaled for groups, and can be prepped on a budget. Many Minute to Win It games are also easy to customize to fit any party theme.
Here are 50 Minute to Win It games that are fun and fast-paced for kids and crowds. Find more fun games, from the 100 best board games for kids and family game night to 25 card games every kid should know, in our Boredom Busters for Kids Guide.
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What are Minute to Win It Games?
Minute to Win It games are all about completing a task as fast as you can within a minute. Many Minute to Win It games use simple household items, so it's not hard to set up a bunch of games at a time. Games can be for either individual or team play.
How to Play Minute to Win It Games
Set a timer for a minute and let the game begin! You can play a bunch of Minute to Win It games in a series and keep score across rounds if you'd like. Or, set up stations and let people cycle through the Minute to Win It games.
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Make paper airplanes as fast as little fingers can, then launch them at a target!
What Are the Best Minute to Win It Games for Kids?
1. Paper Airplane Match-up, Part 1
This game is great if you have lots of paper ready for recycling. Put the paper in a pile and have players make paper airplanes as fast as they can and then launch them toward a target on the wall. Whoever hits the target the most times in a minute is the winner. Our post on how to make the best paper airplanes has some printables you can use!
2. Paper Airplane Match-up, Part 2
Have your group ball up the paper airplanes and toss the wads into a bin. The person who gets the most into the bin within a minute is the winner. You can make it extra tricky by blindfolding the players.
3. Mini Soccer
Hot glue a line of plastic cups to the edge of a poster board so the cup holes all line up in a row. Keep a little space in between the cups. Stand players at a short distance and see how many ping-pong balls can be side-kicked into the cups in a minute.
4. Spoon Race
Give each player a spoon and something fun to balance on it, like a plastic egg. Have them race to a certain point and back. See how many trips the players can make without dropping the item.
5. Cup Mittens
This one is great for younger kids. Have players sit in front of a pile of cotton balls. Put each of their fists into a cup so they have cup “mittens." With a minute on the clock, see how many balls they can put into another cup with only their mitten hands.
6. Mummy Wrap
Give toilet paper or crepe paper to groups of players and let them wrap up a teammate as a mummy. See who can use the most complete rolls in a minute.
7. Balloon Keepy Uppy
This Minute to Win It game is especially perfect for a Bluey birthday party! Working in pairs or small groups, players hit a balloon to others in their group without the balloon falling. If it touches the ground, the group must sit. See who’s left standing after a minute.
8. Pom-Pom Race
Have players go on all fours. Give each person a straw and a cotton ball or pom-pom. See who can blow their cotton ball or pom-pom cross the finish line in under a minute.
9. Bowling
Stack up several plastic cups in a pyramid and use sock balls to knock down the cups. Players race to reset the cups and knock them down. Each turn, the player can stand further away or at odd angles to make it harder. See how many times they can get the stack to fall. This game is easy to make into a theme if you decorate the cups with hearts, snowflakes, or whatever fits.
10. Pass it Down
Put teams of players in circles and give everyone a spoon. See how many times the group can pass a ping-pong ball around the circle using only the spoon (no hands!).
11. Distance Toss
Give two players one cup each and one ball to share. Start with the players standing toe to toe. The first person lightly tosses the ball into their friend’s cup. If it’s caught, both people take a step backward. Keep on tossing, cup-catching, and moving backward, but if there’s a miss, the players must come together again. The pair that’s furthest apart after one minute is the winner.
12. Ring Around the Rosie
Cut out the center of some paper plates, keeping just the border, to make rings. Make a line of five to eight plastic cups and put an artificial flower in each. See who can toss a ring around every flower within a minute.
13. Witch Fingertips
Give a pair of plastic witch fingertips (or plastic tweezers) to players and see how many pom-poms they can transfer from a pile on a table to a cup within a minute.
14. Balance Challenge
Pass out a fun object, like a mini pumpkin or a rubber duck, to players. Have them balance the object on their head and then everyone walks in a big circle for a minute. The person who drops the object the fewest times wins.
15. Get Dressed
Pick two players and give them each a bag with outer clothing items like a hat, mittens, gloves, a scarf, a jacket, and earmuffs. See who can get dressed at the starting mark, run to the finish line, and remove the clothes within a minute.
16. Laundry Toss
Give empty pillowcases to some catchers and balled-up socks to the pitchers. The winning team will be the one who throws the most socks into the pillowcase from several feet away after a minute.
17. Ball Ring
Have a group of players stand in a circle and give everyone a cup. Put an X in the middle of the circle. Have one child stand on the X with a bag of ping-pong balls. Put a minute on the clock and let the center child toss balls into as many friends’ cups as possible. The kids who catch a ball sit down to make it easier to keep track.
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How many marshmallows can you stack in one minute?
18. Apple (or Marshmallow) Stack
Give your player four apples and put a minute on the clock. Try to stack up the apples to make a tower within a minute. For a winter party, have the group try to stack about five or six large marshmallows (and no squishing allowed!).
19. Relay Race 1
Put players in lines of three or four people. Place an empty cup at the feet of the line leader and a bag of jellybeans or pennies about 10 to 15 feet away. The line leader runs to the bag, picks up a bean, races to put it into their cup, and runs to the end of the line. The next player takes a turn, and the team keeps going until a minute is up (or the cup is accidentally kicked over, which results in an automatic loss). Count up the beans to find the winner.
20. Relay Race 2
Give everyone a plastic cup and split your players into the two single-file lines that face each other. The line leaders should stand about 10 feet apart. Put a ping-pong ball inside the first line leader's cup. Put a minute on the clock and have them run to the other line leader. Without touching the ball, have them roll it into the other person’s cup. Then they join the end of that line. The second line leader repeats the process. See if you can get through both lines before a minute is up.
21. Do You Want to Roll a Snowman?
Pass out a die and pieces of paper with a snowman drawn on them. Make sure the snowman has six parts, each labeled with a number (e.g., 1: hat, 2: head, 3: broom, 4: right arm, 5: left arm, 6: body). See who can roll each number of the dice to mark off every piece of the snowman within a minute.
22. Skee-Ball Toss
Hot glue the bottoms of three to five plastic cups to a board in a straight line. Keep a little space between the cups. Position the cups in front of the player so that the first cup is close to the player, but the others are farther away. Toss as many balls as you can into the cups, allotting the most points to the cups that are farthest away.
23. Fishing
Have players sit in front of a tub of ping-pong balls. Paint or mark about half of the balls. Those balls are the sharks, while the unmarked balls are the fishies. Use your cups to scoop up fish and try to avoid the sharks. Each fish earns a point, but each shark deducts a point.
24. Stack Race
This game will have two competitors, each with their own line of 10 cups. Spread out the cups about two feet apart. At the start of the minute, the players run to retrieve Cup 10 and stack it on Cup 1. Then they race to Cup 9, retrieve it, and stack it on Cup 1. The game is over when someone stacks all 10 cups.
25. Memory Match
Write numbers 1-8 on small papers. Repeat so you have two of each number. Line up a 4x4 grid of cups upside down with a number under each. With a minute on the clock, try to find all the matching numbers by flipping over two cups at a time. You can also make this a themed game by hiding things like matching Halloween candy, colored paper hearts, or holiday bows under the cups.
Cool Family-Friendly Games of Minute to Win It
26. Word Search
Create a word search with objects from the season or kids’ names from your group and see how many words each person can find in the allotted time.
27. Word Scramble
Split the children into two lines. Hold up a card with scrambled words from a common theme (like Halloween or things you see at the beach). The first child that can unscramble the word wins a point for their team. The pair goes to the end of the line and the next pair gives it a try. See how many points the teams can earn in a minute.
28. Ball Toss
Set up nine plastic cups in a bowling-pin formation. Stand at a distance and see if you can toss a marshmallow into each cup in a minute or less. For team play, everyone gets one toss and goes to the back of the line at the end of their turn. Tip: Use hot glue to affix the cups to poster board to avoid resetting the cups.
29. Spatula Flip
Put a bunch of light items, like cotton balls or gift bows, in the center of your players. Give each person a blindfold, a spatula, and a paper plate. With the blindfold on, see how many items each player can transfer to their plate in a minute.
30. Alphabet Wars
Working in teams of two to four, have the players come up with words from A to Z that follow a theme (like animals or cartoon characters). See how many letters each team can cover within a minute.
31. Tower Race
Have the players stack cups top-to-top, then bottom-to-bottom, and then repeat to make a tower. See who has the highest tower after a minute.
32. Magic Letters
Pick a letter and five to seven categories (like animals, fruits, sports team names, etc.). Have players think of unique words starting with that letter for each category. See if you can think of something for each category in a minute. Kids can work in small groups.
33. Stack Up
Give each group of players a bunch of plastic cups and see how many they can stack as a pyramid within a minute. Have older kids and adults do this game with one hand behind their back.
34. Name as Many….
How many things within a fun category—like colors, states, or candy bars—can you name in a minute?
35. Artist in Action
Make a list of objects and have an artist draw the first one, adding details until the group guesses it. Then move to the next item. See how many pictures you can draw in one minute. This Minute to Win It game is just like Pictionary!
36. Actor in Action
Prep a list of things (animals, professions, characters, etc.) and have an actor portray each item until someone guesses it. Then move to the next item. See how many things the group can guess in one minute. If you've ever played charades, you know how to play this game!
37. Puzzle Challenge
Dump out some easy jigsaw puzzles and see how fast teams of kids can put them together in a minute. You can even mix pieces from two puzzles if they are easy to distinguish from each other.
38. Speed Spelling
Dump out a box of toothpicks and see how many words you can spell with the toothpicks in a minute.
39. Drop Catch
Sit at a table and drop a ping-pong ball on the surface. Use a cup to catch it in one bounce. See how many catches you can make in a minute.
40. Alphabet Battle
See who can say the alphabet backward the fastest within a minute.
41. Penny Stack
Stack as many pennies as you can within a minute using only one hand.
42. Tic-Tac-Toe
Arrange cups in a tic-tac-toe grid. Stand several feet away. See who can toss a penny into the cups to make three in a row in less than a minute.
43. Jelly Bean Battle
Put a bunch of jelly beans in the center of a table. Give each player a set of chopsticks and a cup. Using only the chopsticks, see how many jelly beans they can move to the cup within a minute.
44. Knock Down
Put several cups at the edge of a table and see who can knock them all down by tossing ping-pong balls at the cups.
Minute to Win it Water Games
45. Sponge Relay
Line up a group of players and give the first person a sponge soaked in water. Pass the sponge down the line to the last person. Then the sponge gets passed back up to the line leader. This process counts as one point. With water flying from person to person, see how many points can be earned in a minute.
46. Over-Under
Line up your group and have the first person dunk a sponge in a bucket. Pass the sponge overhead to the person behind them. The last person in line squeezes the sponge out into a cup and runs it back to the leader with the sponge. The process repeats for a minute. See which team has the fullest cup at the end of the game,
47. Water Wars
Put a bucket of water between two groups of players and one empty bucket at each team’s base. Give each player a plastic cup and let them run to the water to fill their cup and then run back to dump it into their empty bucket. Keep going for a minute and see how much water each team has at the end.
48. Race Cars
Line up some light toy cars and give players some water guns. See who can push their car the furthest using just the water stream.
49. Water Relay
Make two lines of players and give everyone a cup. Give the line leaders a bucket of water, while the cabooses get an empty bucket. Have each leader fill their cups with water. They pour the water into the next person's cup. The water keeps getting passed to the last person, who fills the empty bucket. See who can fill the water the highest before a minute is up.
50. Sponge Toss
Have players partner up and toss a soaking wet sponge to each other. See who can make the most successful catches in a row within one minute without dropping it.