Play a Wild Game of Spoons

Our kids love to play the card game Spoons. When they were young, they especially had fun playing it with the extended family. We spent many hours at Grandma’s house playing this game.

I can’t wait for our little grandkids to get a little bit older so that we can play with them. (However, I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, we can play it with those little rascals at our family reunion in July. . . )

I want to share the game with you, Dear Reader, so that you can enjoy playing it with your family, too.

(Psst! Take a look at the doily that I placed under the spoon and the cards. My husband’s grandmother embroidered it. Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s a wonderful heirloom that we inherited!)

This is an easy game to learn and play. Adults and children can play together. All you need to play is a deck of cards, a bunch of spoons, and a piece of paper and a pencil to keep ‘score.’

The object of each round is to be the first person to get four cards of a kind and to grab a spoon.

Here’s how you play.

You need a bunch of spoons — one less than the number of players. If there are 6 people playing, you’ll need 5 spoons. Kinda like musical chairs, ya know.

Place the spoons in the middle of the table within easy reach of all players. The ‘scorekeeper’ writes everyone’s name on the piece of paper.

If you are using Rook cards, take out the Rook card. If you’re using face cards, take out the jokers. If you have over 6-7 players, you might want to use 2 decks of cards.

The dealer shuffles the cards and deals each player 4. Players pick up and look at their cards.

The dealer places the remaining stack of cards to his side. Remember, the object is to get 4 cards of one number (example: four cards of the number 8).

The dealer takes the top card from the stack of cards by his side. He looks at his cards to see if he has any that he wants to keep. When he’s ready to discard a card, he takes one from his hand and says, “Pass.”

All players pass a card face down simultaneously to the player on their left as the dealer says the word ‘pass.’

The players pick up the card passed to them by the person on their right. The person sitting next to the dealer passes his card to his left and creates a discard pile. (If the dealer goes through all of the cards and nobody has four of a kind in their hand, the dealer picks up the discarded pile and continues the play using those cards.)

The dealer picks up another card from the deck to his side, looks at it, and selects a card to pass. Again, he says “pass” and all players pass a card face down to the player on their left.

Play continues until a player has four of a kind (example four cards of the number 11).

The first player who has four of a kind quietly picks up a spoon. When the other players notice that someone has picked up a spoon, they grab to get a spoon. One person will be left without a spoon. The scorekeeper writes the letter ‘S’ by the name of the player who does not get a spoon.

For the next round, the dealer gives the deck of cards to the person on his left. That person deals the cards and tells players when to pass their cards.

After each round, the person left without a spoon will have a letter added to their ‘score.’ Play continues until someone has the complete word ‘spoons’ spelled out by their name. (If you’re playing with youngish kids, you don’t have to spell the word ‘spoons’ if you don’t want to. You could just play until their interest wanes.)

Did you notice in the picture with the card hand that there was one spoon that was gold? I had some gold spray paint. So, I said to myself, “Self, how can you use the gold spray paint for the game of Spoons?”

Ah hah! I came up with the idea of painting one spoon gold. Now, when we play spoons, there will be a couple of extra ‘rules.’ I like the rule that if someone gets the golden spoon, they can erase one of the letters after their name.

Or, you can have individually wrapped candy. The person who grabs the golden spoon gets a small piece of candy.

Or, whoever gets the gold spoon can say the name of another player and that person will get a letter added to his name.

There’s another fun variation to the game that you can play with teens. Instead of having the spoons on the table, place them around the room. Then, when someone gets four of a kind, players dash wildly around the room in an effort to get a spoon.

This is also fun to play outside. Spread a blanket on the grass and have players sit on it. The spoons are placed several feet away. Players will have to get up and run to get a spoon when someone gets four of a kind.

Hope you have fun playing Spoons!