How to play MASH + a free printable game sheet!

In today’s post: Remember the MASH game? Learn how to play MASH and download a free printable game sheet so your kids can have as much fun as you used to!

Alright, we’re going old school today. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that she had introduced the MASH game to her kids and they were loving it. The memories that came flooding back when I read that! Sitting with friends before school, playing the game to tell our futures: where we’d live, who we’d marry, what jobs we’d have, and whether we’d live in a mansion or a shack when we grew up. It was fun and silly and always a great way to pass the time during inside recess (we had a lot of those in the rainy North West!).

I’ve decided it’s high time to pass the MASH game tradition down to the new generation, and just for fun I created a game sheet you can print out so you can introduce the game to your own kids.

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MASH game worksheet

To make it easier for kids to learn how to play, I made a printable worksheet. Of course you absolutely don’t need to use this worksheet – one of the great things about MASH is you can play anywhere with just a pen and paper. But the worksheet makes it a little easier when you’re learning how to play.

Download the black and white MASH worksheet by clicking here

Download the color MASH worksheet by clicking here

How to play MASH

Ok, the MASH game is a fun way to predict your future by narrowing down options you choose. MASH stands for: mansion, apartment, shack, house. These are your options for where you’re going to live.

You also fill in 4 options for each of the following categories:

Where you will live
Who your spouse will be
What your job will be
How many kids you’ll have
What kind of car you’ll drive

These are the categories we used most often when we played as kids, so that’s what I’ve included on the game sheet, but you can obviously play without the game sheet and include whatever categories you’d like. The unwritten rule was always that at least one option in each category has to be pretty awful, ‘cuz half the fun is finding out you’re gonna be stuck married to The Hulk (just remind kids not to be mean about real people that they know).

Once you’ve filled in all your options, you get to draw the “magic spiral.” Just start with a dot and draw a spiral around it until a friend tells you to stop. Then count how many loops you made – that will be your “magic number”. We’ll use the magic number to narrow down our options until there’s only one left in each category.

In this example, the magic number is 6. Starting with mansion/apartment/shack/house, count down your list of options and stop when you get to the magic number and cross out the option (in this example we’re using 6, so the first option to get crossed off is “Prince Charming”). Continue through your list, crossing out the option you land on each time you count to the magic number (so in this example “13” gets crossed off next, then “School Bus”, etc). When you get to the end of the list, go back to the beginning and keep counting and crossing items off. As you count be sure to skip anything that’s been crossed off already.

When you get down to just one option left in any category, circle it. Then skip that category completely as you continue counting and crossing off options. When you get down to one circled option in each category, you’re done – and now you know the future!