• Red Noses
• Assorted buckets and baskets
• a timer
• spoons
• water
• chopsticks
• small bowls
• wooden spoons
• empty drinking yogurt pots
• a large jar
• small cups
• sensory material (shredded paper, rice, beans or other)
• cardboard

Nose and Spoon Race

This one is just like an egg and spoon race that you would play for sports day, so the kids should be familiar with it.  Our rules are that you choose a nose and balance it on your spoon, put your other hand behind your back and try to get to the finish line without dropping your nose.  If it drops, go back to the starting line and try again.  The kids thought it was hilarious with noses dropping all over the place, a great first game to get everyone in the mood for fun!

Bobbing For Noses

This one is just like bobbing for apples, except that you need to be careful not to sink your teeth too deeply into the noses (they're not for eating!) Each child gets a turn to pick up a nose floating in a bucket of water using only their mouths, we put hands behind our backs and try to pick up a nose as quickly as we can.  You can use a timer for this one to see who is the fastest!


Pick Your Nose

Here's one that we made up just for Red Nose Day, because who doesn't love to pick their nose?  We're making it tricky by using chopsticks to try and pick as many noses as we can in 30 seconds.  Who will be the nose picking champion?


Nose Toss

Every fair always has a variety of games where you need to toss a ball into a bucket or a small fishbowl, so our version uses Red Noses that need to be tossed into little cups or bowls.  We had lots of fun with this one but I would say that you're probably best using some sturdier cups and fixing them to a surface as ours were falling over making it even more challenging!

Hook a Nose

One of my kids' favourite games at the fair is always hook a duck, so of course we had to come up with our own variation of a classic.  This was a tricky one as I couldn't quite find a hook that would do the job well (so please do let me know if you find a better option and I'll add it in).  Any hook that I attached to the string either damaged the noses or was just impossible to manoeuvre to pick them up.  So we simply used a wooden spoon as our fishing rod and found that when there are just a few noses in a large bucket it is still quite a challenge to get the wooden spoon into the opening to pick up a nose.  This is another one that you can use a timer for and see who can get the most in 30 seconds.

Bowling for Noses

Of course there's got to be a bowling game and we love the little bottles that drinking yogurt comes in as they look just like tiny bowling pins.  So we simply set up the little bottles in a bowling pin formation and took turns rolling our chosen noses to see how many pins we could knock down.

Guess How Many Noses?

This is a really easy one to have set up as everyone arrives at your fundraising event, simply fill a large jar with as many Red Noses as you can squeeze in there and leave out some paper and pens for everyone to write down their guess of how many noses are in the jar.  I've also found a few Red Noses from previous years and popped them in there just to add to the mystery.

Where's Your Nose?

If there's one game that I'm terrible at it's finding a ball that's been moved around under a cup, I always get it wrong!  So it's definitely a fun game to play with kids to see how good their observational skills are.  Get the person with the fastest hands to put a Red Nose under one of three cups, then mix them up and move them all around and have the kids guess where it is now!

Digging for Noses

This is a fun one for little kids, using any sort of sensory material as a base, I've used some shredded red paper, but red lentils or rice that you've coloured red (like we've done here with our Rainbow Rice) would work great too.  Then hide lots of noses inside and see who can find the most in 30 seconds.

Nose Goals