9 Activities and Games To Make Your Ganesh Chaturti Party a Superhit

           Being born in Pune, the one festival I await is the grand and pompous, the flamboyant and majestic, the one festival where we dance our hearts out and still put on lots of weight, (owing to our pot-bellied God), all the streets light up with bright lights, and it’s Dhol Tasha everywhere Galore! Yes it is The Ganesh Chaturti!

Planning to make your 10 day event even more exciting? Here’s a list of activities that will make this day even more fun for your friends and family…

1)    Crown Making Contest

Items:- 3-5 Packs including glue, scissors, laces, sequences, stickers and paper plate.

How to play:- Make a team of 4-6 people and hand out the pack, give them a time limit of 5 minutes and ask them to make a crown for Lord Ganesha with the given items.

Here’s a picture of the crowns the teams made and below, the kids who wore them around later.

22)    Talk about Ganesh Chaturti

Ever wondered why we celebrate Ganesh Chaturti?

Wish to teach kids Indian Mythology?

Wish to surprise yourself by knowing things about Ganpati you probably didn’t know?

Or just time to refresh some of Grandma’s stories?

Then, nothing beats an interactive session, you can have with someone who is knowledgable? Or do some research yourself and tell everybody about it?

Last year I invited Mrs. Joshi, my sweet neighbourhood aunty, who also works at AIR, to come over and share Ganpati Tales, Facts and interesting stuff about the festival. Everybody truly enjoyed the session!

 3)    Ganpati’s lost Trunk

Items needed:- Poster of Lord Ganesha

                         Another Ganesha Trunk with double tapes

                         Blindfold

A classic “Pin The Donkey” version for Ganesh Chaturti.

 4)    Ganpati Bingo

Who doesn’t like screaming “Ganpati Bappa Morya”?

While playing this game, I usually give one prize for four corners first, a Bingo T, a Bingo U, square bingo and 1^st 3 Bingos' win.

If you get any one of these, you scream out, “Ganpati Bappa Morya!”

Here’s a sample…

To get to know more about Bingoo and to get my special sheets for Ganpati Bingo, I have a total of 50 of them, drop a comment below with your e-mail ID or mail me at mclavina123@gmail.com.

5)    Feeding Modaks

Items: Modaks and Blinfold

Ganpati loves Modaks and hence having a game with Modaks is a must. For this game, ask teams to pair up with any desired partner.

Now, one of them sits on the chair while the other stands behind him/her.

The person standing behind will be blindfolded and from behind is supposed to feed the one sitting on the chair.

The person on the chair will hold a plate / bowl of a pre-determined number of Modaks.

They have one minute to finish the task without wasting any Modaks and the team that finishes maximum number of Modaks within a minute will be the winning team!

6)    Ganesh Chaturti Quiz

Well, we all know how India went crazy over KBC, so test everybody’s knowledge about Bappa Morya with a Ganpati Quiz.

Below I have listed 10 questions you could ask:-

1)    How many different names does Lord Ganesha have?

A: 108

2)    Which great patriot introduced and popularized Ganesh Chaturti in India?

A:- Lokmanya Tilak

3)    Ganesha’s beloved mother and Father are?

A: Shiv and Parvati

4)    Who installed the first sarvajanik Ganesh idol?

A:- Bhausaheb Laxman Javale

5)    How many days is Ganesh Chaturti celebrated?

A:- 10 Days

6)    Which is the main sweet dish of this festival?

A:- Modak

7)    On which day did Ganesh Chaturti start this year?

A:- 17^th September 2015

8)    Which month of the Hindu calendar is Ganesh Chaturti celebrated?

A:- Bhadrapada

9)    Which animal is the vehicle of Lord Ganpati?

A:- Mouse

10)          Which organization celebrated Ganesh Chaturti in London for the first time?

a)    The Hindu Culture and Heritage Society

b)    The National Holy Society

c)     The Indian Culture Society

d)    The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh

A:- (a)

Another fun thing the host could do is ask people to name 15 names of Ganesha in 20 seconds.

7)    Antakshiri

Make it a fun affair with different rounds of Antakshiri

a)    Sing a song from a word

In this round, the host can make a list of words with or without the Ganpati Theme. Write each of these words on a piece of paper and put it in a bowl. Teams take turns to pick up a word and sing any song having the word in it. You can allow the teams to sing as many songs as they can in one minute, 1 point per song. To make it fun and involve everybody, you can also give extra points to team best chorus, and the dancing team.

After all, prize ke liye kuch be karega!

So, here’s my list of words:-

Ganesha

Ganpati

Aarti

Pooja

Lambodhara

Parvati

Deva

Morya

Shivam

b)    The second round can be a Pictionary round, where you can draw items on the chits and teams take turns to pick them out.

Say for example a team picks up a chit with a picture of flowers on it, they have to sing songs with the word Phool in them.

Other items that can be drawn are:-

Paan, stars, plate of aarti, horse, etc

c)     Third round of antakshiri:-

Use chits and write down names of songs, the teams take turns to guess the name of the movie, and are also required to sing the mentioned song.

Some songs and movies:-

Sadda dil vi tu (ga ga ga ganpati):- Anybody can dance

Deva Shree ganesha:- Agneepath

Mera hi jalwa:- Wanted

Morya Re Morya Re:- Don

d)    Fourth Round of antakshiri, you can play a sound clip and the teams identify which song and which movie it is from

My list of clipped songs:-

Shree Ganeshaya Deemahi – Viruddh

Sindoor Lal Chadayo – Vaastav

Deva ho deva ganpati deva – Humse badkar kaun

Ganpati aapne gaon chale – Old agneepath

8)    Paper and pen games

Papers and pens are easily available resources and hence I’ve thought of 4 such games, they are listed below:-

a)    The minute to win it Ganpati names:- In this game the participants are to write down in a minute maximum different names of Lord Ganesha, the longest list wins!

b)    Color the Ganpati :- If you wish to keep the kids engaged then do this activity where you get printed sheets with Ganpati Image on them, hand it over to the kids to do the rest. Well, the adults could also use some creativity.

c)     The G game :- In this game, ask the participants to write down maximum words that begin with the letter “G”. Some examples could be:-

Names of places starting with a G

Names of people you can think of that begin with a G

Why only G? It’s Ganesh Chaturti Duh!

d)    Ganpati Bappa Morya! :- Ask the right handed participants to use their left hand to write, “Ganpati Bappa Morya” in their preferred language. Whoever manages to write it the maximum number of times in a minute, is the one who takes the prize.

9)    Just some extras

Some more ideas would be:-

a)     To have a ramp walk with kids preferably dressed like mythological characters.

b)    You could also have a modak making and a modak eating competition

c)     Why not have a selfie with Ganpati contest in your society, and create a hash tag for the same

d)    Rangoli making competition

e)    On spotters:- Most colorful dress, the biggest nose ring, matching clothes with the ganpati, the biggest bindi, maximum buttons, biggest belly like the ganpati etc

Okay then! What you waiting for? Go over and have that Ganpati Party!