What it is: A visual spying and guessing game, entertaining for younger kids, and, when I was a kid, my family’s game of choice while waiting for food in sit-down restaurants.
Best for: 2 players or however many more you want.
What you need: Just at least two people to play. And something relatively interesting to look at (this would be a hard game to play in an empty room with white walls, for instance).
How to play: It’s a pretty simple game. One player, like Jennie, looks around the room and picks something she can see. Then she says, “I spy with my little eye something ____,” filling in the blank with an adjective that describes the object she spies (traditionally a color).
So say Jennie’s object was a blue ceramic flower pot (like this one) sitting in the Mexican restaurant where she was waiting with her family.
Jennie would say: “I spy with my little eye something blue.” Then the other players would look around the room for something blue and try to guess Jennie’s object.
“Is it the blue border on that poster of the chili peppers?” someone might ask. Or, “Is it that vase holding the flowers by the door?” Jennie would say shake her head no until someone guessed the right object. Then the person who guessed right gets to choose the next object. And everyone would play happily, spying and guessing until the waiter brings their chips and tacos and enchiladas. Yum.
Strategies: Of course, it’s wise to not be staring at the object you’re spying while you say “I spy…” 😉 That was the tragic mistake that always got my youngest siblings.