The game show A Minute to Win It features contestants competing with each other in simple games that make use of everyday items. These can be easily adapted to minute to win it games for kids – great for parties and all sorts of occasions.
Minute to Win It Games for Kids: Why They Are So Thrilling
The Minute to Win It games can be easily setup at home with household objects. You will find that they are a great way to keep kids entertained with little to no preparation required.
We’ve a list of easy Minute to Win It party ideas that kids will have tons of fun playing!
Get ready to watch the participants laughing and screaming with excitement as they try to complete the challenges in under a minute.
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Part of the thrill and excitement of Minute to Win It games for kids is that each round takes place at lightning speed. 60 seconds goes by really quickly when you have to finish a task head to head with another competitor. Adds to that the cheers of team members, each rooting for their teammates, and you’ve got an exciting party!
What’s more, kids won’t have to wait a long time for their turn. Each round is only a minute or so. This makes it great to get all the kids at a party involved and excited as they anticipate their turn.
Preparing for Minute to Win It Games for Kids
In most cases, all you will need to conduct these Minute to Win It games for kids just need some simple props!
One essential item is a timer or an hourglass to time the one minute. You can use your phone’s timer but it would be even better if there is a large clock or timer that is highly visible. This will allow
You can play it between two groups, or two siblings, or parent-child pairs! The team which completes the task first will score five points, while the losing team scores three points.
Scores are tabulated at the end of all the tasks to see which team emerges victorious. You will also need some prizes for the victorious and fun forfeits for the rest – just to keep the incentive to win up!
Play these Minute to Win It games on a day at home, or bookmark this page for an upcoming kids birthday party. They are great fun even for adults too!
Ready for some fun easy indoor games for kids? Here we go!
50 Exciting Minute To Win It Games List
1. Shake Those Hips!
You will need two empty tissue boxes or boxes with a hole. Put either pompom balls or ping pong balls to fill both boxes. Tie the boxes to the representative of the team and the participant will need to shake all the fillings of the box all out under one minute.
This party game for kids is usually a crowd-pleaser as it sends everyone into peals of laughter.
2. Thread the Pasta or Cheerios
Using only the mouth, participants must use a straw to thread as many cheerios or penne pasta as they can. While this might seem easy, the trick is to keep everything on the straw by the end of one minute.
The team with the highest number remaining on the straw wins! You will need straws and either cheerios or penne pasta for this indoor game for kids.
3. Marshmallow Tower
For this fun game, you will need a bag of marshmallows and a set of toothpicks. The challenge is to build the tallest free-standing tower out of marshmallows as possible in a minute.
4. M&M Challenge
Kids will have to move M&M candies from one bowl to another one using nothing but a straw. It is a fun game which involves a bit of dexterity and speed to win in under a minute.
5. Ping Pong Race
Use straws or pipe-cleaners to create two lanes. They can be in zig-zag lines or crooked lines to make the task more challenging.
At the end of each lane, stick a plastic cup to the edge for the ping pong ball to fall into it. The first one who blows the ball all the way on the path into the cup wins the race!
6. Hula Hoop Spinning
This is a simple game that only requires a hula hoop. The aim is to keep it spinning on the waist for as long as possible over a period of 60 seconds.
7. Backward Alphabet
Want to play a Minute to Win It game that involves no preparation at all? Give kids a minute to recite the alphabet backwards from Z to A.
Think it sounds easy? With the time pressure and need to recall the letters in an unusual order, it is not. If a player makes a mistake, they will have to start again. The player who gets the furthest along wins the challenge!
8. Land the Paper Plane
This is a fun one. All you need for this challenge is a stack of paper and a waste paper basket. Set the waste paper basket a distance away. Then, within 60 seconds, the player will need to fold a paper plane and try to land as many as possible within the waste paper basket. To make it into a team game, you can even have two players working together on the task – hopefully creating a mini production line for them to create and land as many planes as possible over the course of a minute.
9. Stop the Marble
You will need a tilted surface or a ramp for this, and a spoon and a marble. If there isn’t a ramp available nearby, improvise this indoor game for kids by using a chopping board or a thick piece of cardboard and prop it against the wall.
The participant will take turns to play by keeping the marble on the ramp using the spoon to push it upwards. The winner is the one who can keep the marble on the ramp for the longest time.
10. Pipe Cleaner Tower
For this game, you will need to prepare a set of pipe cleaners in advance. Players will have a minute to build the tallest free-standing pipe cleaner tower as possible. Extra points for creativity and aesthetically pleasing designs!
11. Nuts and Bolts
This is a fun challenge for older kids. What you will need is a bowl full of nut and bolts. In a minute, players will need to screw as many nuts and bolts as they can together. To make it extra fun, have nuts and bolts of different sizes. Players will then need to find the correct set of nuts and bolts, adding to the excitement as they go about this Minute to Win It game.
12. Writings on the Hand
This game needs to played in pairs. The two players will be facing each other. One person is the “Scribe” and the other is the “Tablet”.
The Tablet will hold out his or her hand with the palm open and facing up. The Scribe will be shown a letter of the alphabet from behind the Tablet’s back, so that the Tablet cannot see what letter it is. The Scribe will then need to use his or her finger to write the letter on the Tablet’s open palm. The Tablet will need to guess what the letter is.
The team that can guess the most number of letters correctly in a minute wins!
13. Stack the Apples
Only apples are needed for this task. The aim is to create a tower of three apples that does not topple over. Players or teams who manages to stack all three within a minute wins!
You’ll be surprised how entertaining this party game can be for kids.
14. Cookie Tower
A bit similar to Stack the Apples, Cookie Tower makes use of cookies instead. To add to the challenge, you can make it a rule that kids are only allowed to use one hand to create as tall a tower that they possibly can within a minute.
15. Who wants Candy?
Players will have a minute to unwrap candy while wearing oven mitts. This is more challenging that it seems and can be great fun watching kids to get hold of the candy wrappers to complete a seemingly simple task.
16. Sort the Candy
Get a big bag of assorted candy and have the kids sort them into different categories within a minute. For example, the rules could be that candy gets sorted by colour or by size or by shape. Have fun with this one!
17. Cookie without Hands
All you need are some cookies and a broom for cleaning up later on. In under one minute, the participant will need to eat the cookie that is placed on his or her forehead – without using the hands.
Be prepared for lots of crumbs and broken cookies – and laughs too!
18. Balloon in the Air
For this game, each player get three inflated balloons. The challenge is for them to keep the balloons in the air for the longest period of time.
19. Shake Shake
This fun game requires a bit a preparation. First, you will need an empty tissue box and a bunch of ping pong balls. Fill the empty tissue box with ping pong balls and then tape it or strap it on to the player’s waist. Within a minute, the player must try to get as many of the ping pong balls out of the box as possible.
20. Skip the Balls
For this game, you will need about six to seven paper or plastic cups filled to the brim with water, two ping pong balls and two more empty cups. Line the cups in two rows and place an empty cup at the end of each row. When the timer starts, each participant will need to blow the ping pong ball across the cups to the empty cup at the end.
To increase the level of difficulty, you could decrease the amount of water slightly or increase the number of cups.
21. Toothpick Spelling
This is a great game for kids to practise spelling while having fun. Give them a pile of toothpicks and a minute to spell out as many words as possible. You can set a rule that only words that only three letters words or longer are accepted.
22. Roll on Target
Mark out a piece of paper with an X. Then glue the paper to the floor a distance away from the players. The players then have a minute to roll three tennis balls on to the paper and as close as possible to the X. The player that rolls the ball as close as possible to the X scores a point.
23. Eraser Tower
Many kids have erasers in their possession – and if they don’t, the cute erasers are prized possessions and would make great prizes for the winners too.
Start with a box of erasers with cute designs. Give each player an equal number erasers to begin with. The aim of this indoor game for kids is to stack the erasers to create a tower.
The tallest tower made of erasers wins!
24. Toilet Paper Mummy
This Minute to Win It game involves the use of a toilet paper roll. Teams will have a minute to wrap up one of their members as a mummy. The best looking mummy at the end of one minute wins.
25. Tongue Twister Time
Choose a series of tongue twisters and kids will have to get through as many as possible possible within a minute.
26. Chopsticks Skills
Asians would probably be great at this challenge. Have two pairs of chopsticks ready, two cups of marbles and two empty cups. Blindfolds would definitely raise the challenge. Participants will need to transfer the marbles from one cup to the other.
The empty cup can be placed further away from the participant depending on how tough you want the challenge to be.
27. Chopstick Pick Up
While the chopsticks are out, you can also try the chopstick pickup game.
You will need two paper plates for this Minute to Win It game for kids. Scatter a couple of small candies like M&Ms or Smarties on one of the plates. The task would be for the kids to move as many of the candies to the other plate in a minute. This is great for building up fine motor skills.
28. Ping Pong & Spoon Challenge
In this game, you will need a spoon for each team, a bunch of ping pong balls, and a bucket to serve as the end point. Line the kids up a distance away from the bucket. Within a minute, kids will have to transport as many ping pong balls as possible from the start point to the end point using only a spoon. The winner is the team that transports the most in the 60 seconds.
29. Save the King
For this game, you will need a set of playing cards. Set it up by placing one King card at the bottom of a stack of 10 cards. Then, using a straw, players will have to blow away all the top cards, leaving behind only the King, in a minute. If the King gets blown away, the team loses.
30. Cup Stacking
With 36 cups per team, each team must stack and unstack the cups into a pyramid in under a minute. The fastest team wins!
31. Ping Pong Wall Bounce
Place a bucket next to a wall. The players have a minute to bounce as many ping pong balls as possible against the wall and into the bucket. The one who scores the highest number wins.
32. Coin Tower
The game of Coin Tower requires players to create the tallest tower possible out of coins within a minute. To make it more interesting, you can coins of different sizes and a set a rule that the largest sized coins must be at the top of the tower.
33. Coin Water Drop
Fill up a bucket with water and then place a smaller cup or shot glass inside the bucket. Kids will then need to drop a coin into the bucket and get as many as possible into the cup or shot glass within a minute.
34. Float the Balloons
First, inflate the balloons. Then each participant must keep two balloons in the air with only one arm.
If both balloons remain in the air for the entire minute, each participant gets all 5 points.
35. Balloon Darts
For this Minute to Win It Challenge, you can hang up a bunch of balloons as targets. Then players will need to use a set of darts to pop the balloon. They will need to throw the darts from a distance away while blindfolded.
36. Coin Toss
In this fun game, kids will have to throw coins from a distance away into a cup. The team that scores as many coins into the cup within 60 seconds wins this Minute to Win It game.
For added challenge, have the kids blindfolded. Another variation to the blindfold challenge is that a fellow team mate can help the player zoom in on the target by tapping on the cup to create an aural target.
37. Inflate the Balloons
This can be a good game to play if you want to get kids involved in helping to prep for any of the other Minute to Win It games that make use of balloons. Equip each player with an air pump and give them a minute to inflate as many balloon as possible.
38. Roll the Potato/Onion
This party game only requires two potatoes or two onions. Participants must roll the potato using only their nose from one end of the room to the other.
We tried this at home and the boys laughed so hard trying to do this. Well, don’t keep laughing because the faster one wins the race!
39. House of Cards
Give each player a deck of cards and see who can build the highest house of cards in a minute.
40. Word Race
Players will have 60 seconds to write down as many word as they can think of starting with a particular letter of the alphabet.
41. Pass the Water
This is a simple game that is best played outdoors by team. Line up the team of players in a row. Each player has a cup and is blindfolded. The objective of this minute to win it game is to move water from a bucket in front of the first person to an empty bucket behind the last person. They will have to transport the water from person to person using their cup.
42. Dice Balancer
Get the player to hold a plastic spoon with their lips. The challenge is to see how many dice they can balance on the plastic spoon within a minute.
43. Water Dropper
Using pipette droppers or medicine droppers, the participant must transfer a cup of water into an empty one. The fuller one at the end of one minute will win the “minute to win it” challenge.
44. Scoop the Snow Balls
This is a fun little game that can be played by little ones. You will need some cotton balls to act as the snow balls, a ladle for the scooping, a container to scoop the “snow balls” into, and a blindfold.
Scatter out the cotton balls on the ground. Then the player gets blindfolded and has a minute to scoop as many of them as possible into the container.
45. Blow It Down
First, set up a row of paper cups at one end of the table. Then players will have one minute to blow over as many of these paper cups using a straw.
46. Ping Pong Catapult
Place a bucket at one end of a table. Then players have a minute to use a spoon to catapult as many ping pong ball as possible, across the table, into the bucket.
47. Tweezer Worms
Place a bowl full of gummy worms at one end of a room. Then set an empty bowl at the other end. Kids will then need to use a pair of tweezers to move as many gummy worms from the full bowl to the empty bowl in 60 seconds.
48. Pretzel Collector
Give the player a chopstick and a bowl of pretzels. The player needs to hold the chopstick in his or her mouth and use it to collect as many pretzels as possible in a minute.
49. Holey Drinker
Prepare for this game by punching holes into a straw. Then the player needs to use the straw with its holes to drink up as much of a beverage as possible. The player with the least amount left in the cup after one minute wins.
50. Floating Feather
Set up the game by having a bucket at one end of the room. Then get the player to blow the feather from the start point across the room to the bucket. They then repeat it again to get as many feathers into the bucket as possible in a minute.
Feeling Game On for some Family Fun with A Minute to Win it?
Try our ideas! These games can all be played indoors easily. Just gather the items and start the challenges.
Don’t forget it’s all in good fun. Warning: It could get you laughing too hard to complete any of the Minute to Win It games for kids!
If you are looking for more games, check out this awesome compilation of the best party games of kids. Or we think you will also like these memory games for kids or things to do at home with a sibling or even playing The Floor is Lava.
