Pin the Football on the City
Give the traditional Pin the Tail on the Donkey game a fun twist and make it all about the Super Bowl. Put a map of the United States on the wall and have little ones spin and then place football stickers on it. Closest to Houston, site of this year’s Super Bowl, wins. You could also give points or prizes for closest to Atlanta, home of the Falcons, and Boston, which is near where the New England Patriots play their home games.
Bingo
There’s bingo to be played with the football game. You can find printable cards that feature everything from coin tosses to touchdowns here.
The commercials are always a big part of the Super Bowl, and no judgment if you’re watching just to see those and not the game. Commercial bingo is also an option. Each person has a card and marks off items and/or brands that appear in the ads, from animals to Weight Watchers. You can download preprinted commercial bingo cards here. If you’d rather fill in your own, or have your kids guess, you can find cute bingo cards with the squares left blank here.
Paper Football
Anyone else remember making paper footballs in middle school study hall? If not, you can fold a regular sheet of paper into a football shape and two people play against each other at a table. You can find instructions and rules for paper football, also known as origami football, here and here.
Football Toss
Head outside if you can and play some flag football. If kids are too young for that, have them pair up and play football toss. Think of it like an egg toss, but with no mess. Toss a football, or any ball, really, back and forth, taking a step back each time. The team that can throw and catch it from the farthest distance, wins!
If it’s too cold outside, set up a football toss game inside using laundry baskets placed about 10 feet apart. Have kids toss a nerf ball from a line.
Jokes
What did the coach say to the broken vending machine?
Give me my quarterback!
You can find more bad football jokes for kids here. (Warning: some are pretty punny)
Printables
You can find some fun football-themed printables, including a crossword, a word search and coloring pages, here.
Trivia
If you have hard-core football fans (kids or adults) with some knowledge of Super Bowls past coming over for the big game, they may enjoy the 20 Super Bowl Trivia questions found here.
Rate the Commercials
If your older kids and adults are into the commercials, have them rate them. Make score cards for numbers 1 through 5 for each participant, and at the end of each commercial they hold up the score card, with 5 being best. If you’re working on media literacy, maybe hit the pause button after one that gets particularly high or low ratings and have kids explain the reasons for their ratings and what they think the people making the ad were trying to say.
