How to Make Charades Cards at Home: A Simple DIY Guide
Here’s how to make charades cards at home: pick a theme, write 40 to 60 words everyone in your group will know, and sort them into easy, medium and hard. Write each one in large letters on a small piece of card, add a category label, then cut, shuffle and store them in an envelope. With index cards or a printer, it takes about half an hour.
What you need
You do not need anything special. Most homes already have it all:
- Card or thick paper: index cards, old cereal boxes, or 160 gsm printer card.
- A thick pen or marker so the word can be read at arm’s length.
- Scissors or a paper trimmer.
- Coloured pens or stickers to mark difficulty.
- An envelope, jar or small box to keep the deck together.
- Optional: a printer and a simple table in a word processor for neat printable cards.
How to make charades cards step by step
- Choose a theme or a mix of categories. Family nights work well with a blend of actions, animals and films. A birthday or holiday party can use a single theme.
- Brainstorm words. Aim for 40 to 60 for a normal game. Ask each player to suggest a few so everyone feels involved.
- Check every word: can it be acted without speaking, and will most players know it? Swap out anything too obscure.
- Sort by difficulty into easy, medium and hard piles.
- Write or print the cards: one word per card, large letters, category in the corner.
- Mark the difficulty with a coloured dot or border.
- Cut, shuffle and store them in an envelope labelled with the theme.
How to choose good charades words
The best cards are instantly familiar and easy to act in a fun way. Use these real cards as inspiration:
| Category | Easy | Medium | Hard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actions | Brushing your teeth, Texting | Flipping a pancake, Diving off a high board | Astronaut walking in space |
| Animals | Dog, Rabbit, Snake | Koala, Alpaca, Seal | Lemur, Rock Hyrax, Harpy Eagle |
| Films | Titanic, The Lion King, Encanto | Gladiator, Mad Max, Unbreakable | Citizen Kane, Moonrise Kingdom |
The action ideas come from the Act It Out deck, the animals from the Animals deck and the titles from the Films deck. For hundreds more by category, browse our big list of charades ideas.
A few quick rules of thumb:
- Concrete beats abstract: “Eating spaghetti” is easier than “hunger”.
- Two to four words is ideal for titles and phrases.
- Mix lengths and types so the game does not feel repetitive.
- Keep it family friendly if children are playing.
How to sort cards by difficulty
Colour-coding makes it easy to deal the right cards to the right player:
| Level | Colour | Who it suits | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Green | Young kids, beginners | Cat, Sleeping, Birthday Cake |
| Medium | Yellow | Older kids, most adults | Bouncy Castle, Ice Fishing, Finding Nemo |
| Hard | Red | Teens, confident adults | Spelling Bee, Parallel Parking, The Grand Budapest Hotel |
Let younger players draw from the green pile while adults draw from yellow and red. It keeps mixed-age games fair without changing the rules.
A simple printable layout
If you have a printer, this layout gives clean cards in minutes:
- Open a new document in any word processor or free online editor.
- Insert a table with 3 columns and 4 rows. That fills a US Letter or A4 page with 12 cards.
- Set the font to at least 24 pt bold and centre each word.
- Add a small category label in the top corner, like “MOVIE” or “ANIMAL”.
- Shade each cell lightly in green, yellow or red for difficulty.
- Print on thick card, then cut along the table lines.
For pre-readers, replace words with simple pictures. A drawing of a cake, a dog or a rocket works just as well as text.
Custom theme ideas
Homemade cards really shine when you make them personal:
- Family in-jokes: “Dad’s famous barbecue”, “Grandma’s dance moves”, “losing the TV remote”.
- Holiday decks: Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving or a birthday theme.
- Classroom decks: this week’s spelling words or topic vocabulary.
- Travel decks: places you have visited together or want to visit next.
- Book club or film club: titles from your shared list.
Making the cards can be part of the fun, too. Before a party, hand every guest five blank cards and a pen as they arrive, then collect them in a bowl. You get a deck full of surprises, and nobody can say the words were unfair, because the group wrote them. Just have one adult quickly check the pile for anything too obscure or not suitable for younger players.
Keep each themed deck in its own labelled envelope, and you will have a ready-made games night box for years.
Short on time?
If you need a game in the next five minutes, skip the scissors. You can play charades online free in a browser with ready-made themed decks, then make your own custom cards when you have more time.
