Romeo & Juliet Games for Kids

Costume Time

• Toss together a very mixed pile of dress-up items that would be appropriate for a Romeo and a Juliet. Examples might include elastic-waist, floor-length skirts, ballet slippers, tunics and capes. Pair party guests into teams of two, using boy-girl combos if possible. Set a timer and set them free to pick through the pile and dress each other and themselves.The first couple that is fully costumed wins.

  For a variation that requires fewer clothing items, let each team go one at a time and give the prize to the team with the shortest time. To keep it interesting, include clothing items that are not era-appropriate and a few items such as bed sheets that can be improvised into multiple garments.

Pen and Sword

• For a party, drop theme-related puzzles into the goodie bags that kids will take home. A word search and a crossword puzzle are easy to make ahead of time. In a classroom or drama club setting, use trivia and match-the-quote games; award toy swords or daggers or tiny vials of sugar candy. Thespians and drama queens of all ages will act out in a game of charades using well-known phrases from Shakespeare's tragic love story.

Seek and Find

• If your tender 'tweens are all girl power one minute and boy crazy the next, and you somehow agreed to a co-ed party anyway, you can provide hostess and guests with a well-supervised chance to be flirty yet safe. In this variation on hide-and-seek, every girl is a Juliet, and every boy is a Romeo. Romeo has to find a maiden and bring her to home base.

  Adapt a scavenger hunt by assigning each team of two a character from the play. Have each team collect several objects that represent traits of the assigned character. When all teams are back, let each team guess the character by the items collected.

Game Show Games

• Prepare a "Jeopardy"-like board with categories such as "Metaphors and Similes" and "Foreshadowing." Play a version of "Don't Forget the Lyrics" with songs whose lyrics represent themes and conflicts in the play. Adapt "Dating Game" so Juliet gets to ask questions of her suitors and perhaps other men in the play. Play "Password' using single-word clues to get another player to recite a well-known line from the play.