How it works
These games to play with your cousins are for a pack of mixed ages with no grown-up in charge. Every game says what the youngest does, so a four-year-old and a teenager can play the same round.
Read the full guide
Three rules for a pack with no grown-up
1. Agree the edges of the game before it starts, and stay inside them. 2. Outdoors, each of the youngest cousins plays beside an older one. 3. Nothing is played outside after dark unless a grown-up knows.
When the grown-ups ask what you have been doing
Show them. Things to put on for the grown-ups holds a ten-minute play, a quiz about the grown-ups as kids, a kitchen orchestra and a café that serves dessert.
- Let the youngest cousin choose the first game. The oldest chooses the second.
Questions and answers
What are fun games to play with your cousins at a sleepover?
Eight are for after lights-out, played in whispers with one flashlight between you: One Year in One Whisper, Sleeping Bag Post Office and How Many Stairs? Checked at Breakfast among them. None of them is scary.
What are good games to play with your cousin when there are only two of you?
Seven are written for two, among them Two Circles: What Both Our Houses Have, Draw My Room From My Words and A Mission to Take Home, which lasts until the next visit.
How do you make a game fair when cousins are different ages?
Give the youngest a head start or a job that nobody else has. In Stagger Race, a Step for Every Year, each cousin starts a step ahead for every year younger. In Rescue Tag, Only the Little Ones Unfreeze, the two youngest cannot be caught.