Kids New Year’s Eve Party

New Year’s Eve with Kids

Make no mistake… New Year’s Eve in the Smith house will be 8:00 for anyone under the age of 9. But… from 6 until 8, I have a few fun games and snacks and decorations to help the kids toast the arrival of 2018. I had to prep these for a news segment so figured I’d share if anyone’s looking for last minute party ideas!

New Year’s Eve Decorations

These circular garlands are my favorites (affiliate link)… I grab these round stickers on Amazon and they are truly the easiest things to make. Just sandwich a length of twine or ribbon between the stickers and you’re done! I used gold for New Year’s Eve, but they come in lots of other colors (think baby showers… birthday parties… you name it.)

Our Michaels had this shiny gold craft paper on sale for 99¢ a sheet so I picked up two pages, printed out some letters and then traced over them with a ball point pen to leave behind a faint outline on the gold paper. I punched holes in each letter and bibbidy bobbity boo… a “Cheers” garland.

New Year’s Eve Food

Baking chocolate comes in lots of colors and is super easy to melt in the microwave. I dipped giant marshmallows and oreos into the melted chocolate and then rolled them in gold and silver sprinkles. I also LOVED this idea for a fun sandwich, but never got around to making them for my segment.

I mixed some super fine glitter with mod podge and then painted it onto the bottom of plastic cups. Because I mixed the glitter in first, it doesn’t come off once the mod podge dries. Rock candy a bubbly drink and this is pretty much the fanciest drink my kids have ever enjoyed!

New Year’s Eve Activities

I grew up playing this first game every year on New Year’s Eve and it was the MOST fun. Wrap a large chocolate bar in craft paper or an old paper bag. Tie it with twine and sit together in a circle. You’ll need a die (or two), a fork, a knife, a hat, and gloves. (Throw in a scarf for an added degree of difficulty.) The first person rolls the die; if the number 6 is rolled, that person puts on the hat and gloves (and scarf) and uses the knife and fork to try and cut into the chocolate. Meanwhile, the rest of the group continues to pass and roll the die… if someone else rolls a 6, they take over with the hat, gloves, knife and fork. (Use a pair of dice and wait for folks to roll doubles to make it a little harder!)

Countdown bags. Find small toys or activities to place in a handful of gift bags. Attach a tag with a clock and assign each bag a time leading up to “midnight”. At 6:00, the kids can open the first bag… 7:00 the next, so on and so forth!

DIY photo booth! A few sheets of black card stock and a handfull of thin dowels is all you need to make your own photo booth props. I looked up the obvious shapes online and just cut them out of the cardstock and then added a gold embellishment. The dowels are hot glued on the back and… that’s all this activity took to prepare! I have an Instax camera so the kids had a blast taking pictures of each other with the various props.

Sorting 2-0-1-8. We’ll do this before dinner, but it’s fun and really easy to prepare. I cut out all the numbers in 2-0-1-8 and placed them all in a bowl. Each child will take turns trying to sort the numbers so that all the 2s end up in one container, the 0s in another, so on and so on. The FUN occurs because the containers will be at all four corners of the room so there will be some running involved; fastest time wins!

I’m not sure we’ve had fancy plans on New Year’s Eve for ages, so Bravo and/ or Netflix will probably be on our post-kids party agenda! Hoping all of you a fun and celebratory night!

Reminder that I’d love you to fill out my reader survey… I’m sending a $50 Target gift card to one of you! Thanks in advance- I’m excited to bring you helpful content for 2018! Double reminder that if you SUBSCRIBE to receive my newsletter, then you can also join my super secret, super fun, super cool Facebook group!

HAPPY 2018!!!