What better way to celebrate the holiday than with a Christmas punch game? This Grinch Grab game is a fun, festive game for all ages. Simply punch through tissue paper to find the prize inside. Just watch out, if someone grabs the heart, they can grab your prize too!
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I’ve been on a Grinch kick lately. I’m thinking about making my son’s classroom Christmas party this year Grinch themed just because I already have all the ideas!
Seriously. Grinch cookies (they’re so cute), Grinch brownies, Grinch cupcakes, and today my newest punch game called Grinch Grab.
If you didn’t see my last punch game, this ghostbusters game went viral on TikTok. And my kids loved it so that’s a thing.
And if you’ve never seen a punch game before, it’s inspired by a game from Price is Right where the contestants have to punch through circles to try and win prizes. I’ve been making punch games since my gratitude game eight years ago, and my boys are obsessed.
And this one is my current favorite out of all of the Christmas party games I’ve shared this year! There’s a reason this and my Don’t Eat Santa game went bonkers on TikTok!
Christmas Punch Game Supplies
Supply notes
I’ve included links to the actual supplies I used. I made this Christmas punch game Grinch themed but you could follow the same instructions to make a Christmas tree punch board with different colored cups and tissue paper!
Or use the tutorial to make any other kind of Christmas punch game you want. (I’ve included some pictures of others I’ve done over the years at the bottom of the post).
Totally up to you!
- Light Green Plastic Cups – I used these lime green plastic cups. They’re not the best quality but they’re the perfect color for this game!
- Light green tissue paper – I bought this pistachio green pack to use for some other Grinch activities I’m doing and it’s the perfect color for this Grinch game!
- Rubber bands – any rubber bands work, just make sure they’re big enough to fit around the cups. I also recommend if you can get them, the thinner ones over the thicker ones. They just fit around the cups better!
- Heart stickers – I grabbed a roll of these heart stickers. They’re the perfect size to take up a good space in the center of the cups! You could really use any heart stickers, but these seemed to be the ideal size. You only need these for the Grinch version!
- Foam board – I just grabbed a white foam board from Dollar Tree to make my board. It’s not the sturdiest but works for my purposes!
The last thing you’ll need are prizes. I’ve included a huge section full of prize ideas if you’re making this a Grinch game later on this post so I’ll skip this for now!
How to Make a christmas Punch Game
The best part about this Christmas game is that it can be played at any holiday party or gathering – just grab some supplies to make your punch game and you’ll be ready to play in no time!
I’ve included instructions on how to make a basic Christmas punch game below but keep reading below the instructions to find out the key to making this a Grinch Grab game, not just a typical punch game.
That’s where the fun really starts!
1 – Make Your Punch Board
To make a Christmas punch game, you have to first start by making the actual punch board. To do that, lay out your cups on a white board to figure out your design and the number of cups you need.
I made a Christmas tree design (sort of) with 24 cups. I figured that was a pretty good number for any classroom party, kids party, or family party.
Once you’ve figured out your design, hot glue the bottom of a cup and place it hot glue side down on the board at the bottom of your design.
Tip!
If you want to make something other than a Christmas tree, my biggest tip is to search whatever design you want + cupcake cake and see how they create the cupcake cake – then recreate that on your board!
Keep going until you’ve added all of your cups to the board. Try to keep them a little spaced out to make adding the tissue paper on top a little easier.
Tip!
If you’ll have more people playing than you have space for on your foam board, no worries. Just make some extra sets of cups all stocked with goodies and ready to go. Then when people punch out cups, just slide the pre-filled cups inside of the emptied ones. It’s a quick hack for using one punch board for 25+ people!
2 – Fill Your Cups
The second step is to fill all of those cups with Grinch goodies or if you’re just doing a generic punch game, Christmas goodies. I put together a huge list of ideas that would make great fillers for kids, teens, and adults below.
Anything Grinch themed, green colored, Christmasy, or things with hearts would be a great option.
If you’re doing this for kids at something like a classroom party, I recommend small treats and favors. If you’re doing this with teen and adults, you can get a bit more creative with things like gift cards, green cash, and actual prizes.
Make it a bit more interesting, which is especially fun once you get to the Grinch Grab part of the game!
Grinch Grab Filler Ideas
- Grinch bracelets
- Grinch figures
- Grinch slime
- Grinch socks
- Grinch snot (these are too cute)
- Grinch krispy treats
- Green gift cards to places like Starbucks, Whole Foods or Subway
I even found some Grinch Hershey Kisses at the store that were perfect for a little extra filler for my cups or to use in this Christmas kisses trivia game!
If you need more ideas for green food ideas, here’s a whole list!
- TicTacs
- Gum (lots of green options!)
- Sour Skittles
- Mike & Ikes
- Airheads
- Sour Patch Kids
- Mint chocolates
- Black Forest Gummy Bears
- Nature Valley granola bars
- Fruit by the Foot
So really pretty much anything works, just be creative!
Make It a Grinch Grab
If you’re planning to do this as a grinch game, put a heart sticker in three of the cups with the other prizes while you’re filling them. This is IMPORTANT! If you don’t do this before you cover the cups, you won’t be able to do the Grinchiest part of this game.
3 – Cover Your Cups
Lastly you need to cover your cups so that players have something to punch through.
Start by folding your tissue paper in half and cutting it in half.
Then fold what you just cut in half and cut it again so you have four squares of tissue paper for every individual piece of tissue paper you started with.
Make it even easier by cutting all of your tissue paper at once. Since the tissue paper is so thin, you can just stack the pieces together and cut them once in half then in half again. Easy as can be.
The pieces of tissue paper don’t need to be precise, they just need to be a good size to fit over the cups.
Once you have all of your tissue paper cut, place a heart sticker somewhere around the center of the tissue paper.
Then finish it off by placing the piece of tissue paper, with the heart in the center of, on top of your cup. Try to get the heart as close to the center as possible, only for aesthetic purposes, it really doesn’t matter.
Wrap a rubber band around the tissue paper and cup to secure it to the cup. This is much easier to do if you keep a bit of space between your cups as I mentioned earlier.
Then repeat with all of your tissue paper and all of your cups.
Your game will look like this and you’re ready to play!
How to Play a Christmas Punch Game
The general idea of a Christmas punch game is simple. Everyone gets a turn and on their turn they punch through the tissue paper on ONE cup (unless you’ve made enough for multiples).
They pull out any prizes inside and keep them. If they don’t like their prizes and want to switch with someone else who doesn’t like their prizes, they can do that.
If you’re doing the Grinch Grab version, the person who gets the heart sticker gets to choose to swap their prize with anyone else (if they choose.
I recommend doing that simple variation if you’re playing this with kids, especially if it’s a bunch of kids that aren’t your kids or family members.
Other Ways to Play
Don’t want to make it that easy? Here are some other fun ways to play where the Christmas punch game becomes a punch a prize board versus that being the actual game (this is typically how we do it).
Make It Part of a Game
If you want to make the punch game part of an actual prize, here are some great ideas we’ve done before!
- Have people roll a dice and if they get doubles, they get to punch a cup! Kind of like in this candy bar game or this saran wrap game.
- Blow up a bunch of balloons and fill a handful of them with numbers (numbers that match numbers written on the front of the cups). As people pop balloons and find numbers, they get to punch the corresponding number.
- Use it to determine what number gift people get in a gift exchange (or a favorite things party).
Make it a Prize
- Have people answer Christmas trivia questions and if they get it right, they get to punch a cup! Kind of like I did with these ping pong games! Or you could make it a bit more exciting and only people who finish their tree in this Christmas trivia game get a prize!
- Have people play these Christmas minute to win it games and the person who wins each game gets to punch out a prize! I did a reindeer shaped one and each winner in our reindeer games punched a prize!
- Play this Christmas higher or lower trivia game and whoever gets to 10 blocks first gets to punch first, keep going until everyone has had a turn!
- Play Christmas bingo and winners get to punch a prize. Mix it up with this Christmas movie bingo or this Christmas music bingo!
There are a ton of ways you could use this as the prize for Christmas party games. Or just come up with your own rules – the possibilities are endless!
Other Ways to Use a Christmas Punch Game
- Fill it with your Christmas party favors and let kids punch something out at the end of a party.
- Make it a DIY advent calendar and fill it with either Christmas activities or little treats and toys to open every day.
- Fill it with date night ideas and every week punch out a new date night idea (or family fun activity).
How to play Grinch Grab
However, if you want to turn this into a more exciting game, turn it into a true Grinch Grab. This game is, for obvious reasons once you read the rules, better for teens and adults who like a little more excitement in their game play!
Remember those three heart stickers I had you put into the three cups earlier? This is where those come into play.
Have everyone choose a number randomly from 1 to however many people you have playing. You can do this by cutting up little slips of paper or by doing any of the things I talk about in my gift exchange games post! The choosing cards one is my personal favorite.
Have everyone stand in a circle with the punch game at the front of the circle. People should stick around for the duration of the game.
Have the first person come to the game and punch through one of the cups. Grab any goodies out that are inside and show the entire group what they got, just like you would if you were doing this gift exchange card game.
Then they can tuck them away or hide them however they’d like. You’ll see why that matters in a minute!
Next, have the second person come up and punch through a cup and grab their prizes. Same thing – show the prizes off then get back in the circle.
Whenever someone punches through a cup and pulls out a prize PLUS a heart sticker, it’s called a Grinch Grab and similar to a gift exchange, that lucky little heart means that they can now choose to keep what was in their cup OR they can choose to trade with anyone who has already punched out a prize.
It’s just a trade, they’re not stealing, so both people still end up with prizes – just one person ends up with what they would consider the better of the two prizes.
The kicker is that they have to ask the person for their prize and remember what their prize was (not exactly but good enough like saying you want the money from Sarah is fine, no need to say you want the $10 bill from Sarah). If they ask the wrong person or ask for the wrong prize, they’re out of luck and lose the opportunity to trade.
The heart is only good for that particular round so if someone pulls a heart, they can only trade immediately, they can’t wait until someone else pulls out a prize they like more later.
Note!
If a heart sticker is pulled out in the first punch, that person is out of luck and that heart is wasted.
Keep playing until everyone has had a turn to punch out a cup and get a prize, then everyone keeps the prizes they have in hand. If anyone wants to switch after the game is over, they’re more than welcome to!
Turn it into a gift exchange
Love this idea but always do a gift exchange as one of your annual Christmas party ideas?
Have people bring a gift for a gift exchange that has two conditions – it has to be the color green and has to be small enough to fit in a plastic cup.
You can either have people bring their gifts wrapped (if you’re partial to the unwrapping process) or unwrapped. When they arrive, they should give you as the hostess the gift and you’ll secretly go and put their gift into one of the cups in another room.
Add your tissue paper and heart and top and keep doing this with guests gifts until all of the cups are filled and topped.
When you’re ready to play, just play in the exact same way as outlined above. If you want more stealing, feel free to add in additional heart stickers over three. Otherwise, people will still be exchanging gifts, just in a little more exciting way!
If someone gets their own gift, you can treat it like a heart where they get to trade with someone else!
Christmas Punch Game Examples
If you want to do something other than the Grinch, here are a handful of examples of Christmas punch games we’ve made over the years. We love these!
More Christmas Games
If you like this Christmas punch game, you’ll love these other fun Christmas games!
- Candy cane games – ten different Christmas games using just candy games! Perfect for hosting your very own candy cane Olympics!
- Christmas floor game – this is the ultimate Christmas game that will have people guessing Christmas words and scenes!
- Christmas would you rather – hilarious would you rather scenarios that are all Christmas inspired!
- Christmas Jeopardy – a Christmas variation on the popular game show, this one is super fun!
- Christmas Family Feud – can you figure out what the audience thinks is the most popular Christmas song? Find out in this fun Christmas version of the popular game show! Like game shows, this Christmas danger words game might also be fun!
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Christmas Punch Game
Ingredients
- 1 foam board or large piece of cardboard
- 24 large light green plastic cups
- 6 pieces light green tissue paper cut into 4 squares each (24 total pieces)
- 27 heart stickers
- 24 rubber bands
- 24 prizes
Instructions
- Start by placing your cups on the foam board wherever you want them to go.1 foam board or large piece of cardboard, 24 large light green plastic cups
- Once you’ve finalized your layout, hot glue the bottom of each cup and immediately place it in its spot on the board. Repeat this until you have a board full of cups with the open part of the cup facing up.
- Add a prize into each of the cups. If doing the grinch game, add a heart sticker to three of the cups as well.24 prizes, 27 heart stickers
- Cut your tissue paper into squares so you have 24 total squares. Add a heart sticker to each of the squares as close to the center as possible.6 pieces light green tissue paper, 27 heart stickers
- Once your tissue paper is ready, carefully place your first piece of tissue paper on top of a cup. Use a rubber band to secure the tissue paper around the edges of the cup, pushing the issue paper down so that the heart sticker is as close to the center of the cup as possible.24 rubber bands
- Set the board up leaning against a wall, fence, or railing and you’re ready to play!
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