Filling Holiday Down Time with Snowman Stumper

The other day I found myself in a classroom during their holiday party with a little down time. They had a holiday memory game they were playing in pairs, and were quickly losing interest in that. A movie was scheduled to come on, but there were a couple of technical glitches causing a delay. I had to think fast before the room erupted in chaos (yep, it happens that fast). I had the students clean up and announced we would play Snowman Stumper (name made up off the top of my head because I love alliteration). I told the students it was just like Hangman, only I would draw a snowman as letters were not guessed. I thought of a word (snowman was my first; yea, I know, real creative). And I used the class set of popsicle sticks to choose students to guess letters. They guessed that one really fast since the name of the game was Snowman Stumper, but it served as a nice introduction as to how to play. I proceeded to play the game using additional holiday words such as reindeer, Santa, snow, Rudolph, Frosty, etc. We didn't get through too many rounds before the movie came on, but the students wanted to play again later. And the class was managed through a dicey time.