New Year’s Eve Activities for Families
Happy New Year! I love finding new family activities to do on New Year’s Eve to make New Year’s Eve fun with Kids! If you’re also finding yourself at home with the kids on New Year’s Eve – it needn’t be a boring affair. It can often be one of the most fun nights of your year with lots of family games and activities! Keep reading to find out how to have a fun New Year’s Eve with your family!
New Year’s Eve is like the last party of this holiday season before we hit the ground hard and get back to reality with work and the return to school. Normally we spend New Year’s Eve with friends but this year we’re home just as a family. So, we’re planning a few little things to do as a family on New Year’s Eve. We’re planning to blow up 12 balloons, each with a little family activity in and then pop them throughout the day – possibly on the hour (obviously running our day from 8am-8pm so as not to keep them up too late!) Read on for our family friendly New Year’s Eve ideas…..
Family activities for New Year’s Eve
Here are the things we are planning for a family friendly New Year’s Eve……….
- Writing our stars for our thankful tree and 2024 bucket list (see our post here all about our thankful tree.)There are lots of variations on this idea – we use our Advent Tree to hang our thank yous on but I love this Printable New Year’s Eve Gratitude Garland and this New Year’s Eve Wishing Wall.
- A little walk in the fresh air with friends
- Making your own Pizza for dinner.
- Play Charades (Finlay’s new favourite game) or Pictionary
- Play Face the Cookie and Suck it Up and have a Winter Olympics (see below for more Minute to Win it Games)
- Make kiddies mockcocktail (sparkly water and fruit juice) and have a toast using Brightberry non toxic silicone cups!
- Play New Year’s Eve Eye Spy with this free printable!
- Have a reminisce and fill in this New Year’s Eve Journal – looking back on the past year. Check out this free printable here….
- Colour in a Mandala Coloured Countdown Clock. Our little people love colouring in so I’m hoping these will keep them busy for a while!
- Light Sparklers in the garden
- Play a board game
- Play glow in the dark bowling (add glow sticks to plastic water bottle for the pins.)
- Take a photo to represent 2024 or to predict 2025!
- Choose a sandwich from the shop (our kids love a shop bought sandwich – it’s a special treat!)
- Toast Marshmallows
- Create a Time Capsule
- Play Who am I?
- Play Balloon Keepy Uppy
- If you’re brave enough – let the kids give mum and dad a makeover or face paint!
- Have a picnic under the Christmas Tree
- Take some silly photos in a NYE Photo Booth with these fab New Year’s Eve Photo Props!
- We got lots of play-doh for Christmas so we’re going to cheat a little and not actually make any – but instead decorate it with sparkles and sequins! See here for Buggy and Buddy’s celebration play-doh if you’d like to make your own!
- Stack lots of paper cups with paper between them and see if you can pull the paper out without knocking the cups down!
- Choose your 12 Family Adventures for the year ahead! We like to get together and choose a Family adventure that we’ll do together every month anything from ‘Visit a Beach’ to ‘Climb a Mountain’. You can find more ideas of what we choose and more about the 12 Family Adventures challenge here……
- Make some fruit rockets – these so look the part!
Family friendly party games for New Year’s Eve
We like to include some family friendly games on New Year’s Eve that kids from all ages can play. As we have kids aged 4-16, games work best for us if they have simple rules, are team games or everyone gets a chance to play at their own pace. Here are a few of our family friendly games that we’ve played before on New Year’s Eve.
FACE THE COOKIE – place a cookie on your forehead and then try to eat it without using your hands, you have to wiggle your forehead to get the cookie to your mouth! It’s lots of fun to watch!
HEAD ABOVE THE REST – thanks to my friend Amanda for this great game- basically you just measure everyone’s head and whoever has the biggest head wins!!!!
SKITTLES IN CREAM – Hide skittles in squirty cream and see if you can find them all without using your hands!
TALLEST TOWER – Give kids a pile of paper plates and paper cups and see who can build the tallest tower!
TEALIGHT POINTS – Place 8 tea lights in a row. Adjust the gaps between the tea lights depending on the age of the kids playing. The aim of the game is to see how many candles you can blow out with one breath!
BALLOON KEEPY UPPY – For this game, you need a red ribbon (enough to make a circle around a person, marshmallows and two bowls. Participants have the keep the ball in the air whilst also putting as many marshmallows in a bowl as you can.
BALLOON SMASH – This works well if you have a group of lots of kids. Tie a balloon to each of their legs, they have to burst each others balloons when the music stops!
Family Minute it to Win It Games
Minute it to win it games are a great idea for simple party games for mixed aged groups on New Year’s Eve. sometimes actually having the minute time limit is good for keeping interest and other times just playing them as quick and easy party games works well,
MARBLE FEET – how many marbles can you move in a minute from one bowl to another but only using your toes!
DEFYING GRAVITY – Give each player three balloons. They have to keep all three balloons up in the air for a minute.
TRAFFIC YAM – Push a sweet potato across the floor from one side of the room to another with just your nose
CHUBBY BUNNIES – How many marshmallows can you fit in your mouth and still say Chubby Bunnies?
STRAW MALTESERS – How many Maltesers can you move from one bowl to the next by only using a straw?
SCOOP IT UP – Using nothing but a spoon in your mouth, transfer six ping pong balls from one bowl to another) in less than one minute. No hands!
SNOWBALL SCOOP – Using a spatula and cotton wool balls, blindfold each opponent and have them scoop as many cotton wool ‘snow’ balls into a bowl as you can!
BALLOON STACK – using paper cups and a balloon, each person has to try and stack the cups by only picking them up with a balloon! You’ll need to blow the balloon up slightly and use it to stack the cups.
PLATE, CUP TIC TAC TOE – Divide your table into a nought and crosses board using masking tape. Choose whether you are a ‘nought’ with a paper plate or a ‘cross’ with a paper cup. Try flipping cups until one flips in full and stands up again, then you get to place one of your pieces (cup or paper plate) in one of the squares. The person wins when they have scored three of their pieces in a row, like ‘noughts and crosses.’
REINDEER HANDS – Put cups over your hands like hooves and see how many mini marshmallows you can transfer into a bowl!
PARTY BLOWERS – Using cotton wool balls balanced on paper cups – how many balls can you blow off the top with a party blower before the minute runs out?!
CANDY CANE CHOPSTICKS – Using candy canes as chopsticks, how many mini marshmallows you can transfer into a bowl?
Here’s Finlay playing ‘Face the Cookie’! He was pretty good at it – that boy loves cookies!
Best Family Board Games for New Year’s Eve
You can read our full post on the Best Board Games for Christmas and New Year here, but some brilliant games that are quick and easy and perfect for a family New Year’s Eve are below.
Five Second Rule – Five seconds to name 3 things – a good game for kids of all ages!
Herd Mentality – Easy, quick to learn game for large groups!
Ping Pong Hat Game – Fun catching game for all ages!
Beat That – A challenge game for families. This is a great game to play in teams!
Double Ditto Game – Fun party game – great for playing in teams!
Six Second Scribbles – Frantically fast drawing game!
Twister Ultimate – Physical game of fun!
So, if you are having a little New Year’s Eve party or not, I think these family New Year’s Eve ideas would be a fun way to get the family together regardless. I’m hoping we can have a few fun family photos from these activities!
More ideas for Family Fun!
For more ideas of how to get the kids outdoors this Winter and fun activities to try as a family – check out our post on The Best Winter Outdoor Activities.
Or…… if your weekends disappear in the blink of an eye and you’d like to try more ways to get your family to adventure and explore together – you might like our 12 Family Adventures that we do every year.
If you’re near Manchester – then you’ll love these New Years ideas for families in Manchester!
