Great New Year's Eve Games for Kids

Your kids are finally old enough to stay up until the ball drops, so you have decided to host a New Year's Eve slumber party completely with a sparkling cider toast. But what are you going to do to keep the kids entertained until midnight? If you're finding yourself fresh out of New Year's Eve game ideas for your child's slumber party, don't fret. Below are some great game ideas for your child's New Year's Eve celebration.

New Year's Traditions From Around the World
American New Year's traditions are probably familiar territory for your children, but what about other countries' traditions? This game will help your children become more familiar with some foreign New Year's traditions.

Idea of the Game:

You can get as fancy or as simple as you want when creating the poster boards for this game. In the simplest form you need to write the "Chinese New Year", "Cambodian New Year", "Sinhalese New Year, India", "Tamil New Year", and "Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year)" across the top of a poster board, you also need to write a characteristic for each of these New Year's celebrations on an individual note card. Below the titles on the poster board the kids will be placing a note card with a characteristic of a New Year celebration. The idea is to have the teams race against each other in matching the characteristics of New Year's celebrations with the foreign New Year they are representative of. You can find characteristics that you want to you use on your own by doing a quick Wikipedia search, or you can use the characteristics I've provided below. Make sure you make yourself a key so that you know what the correct answers are. Have the kids match up the characteristics with the New Year's celebration they think they go with. Then have them tell you when they want their answers check, if they are all correct they win, if they aren't, tell them how many they have correct and tell them to keep going. The first team to match all the characteristics with correct New Year wins.

Chinese New Year: Dumplings and fish are served for dinner on New Year's Eve.
Cambodian New Year: In temples, people erect a sand hill on temple grounds.
Sinhalese New Year, India: Visiting relations and friends and exchanging presents.
Tamil New Year: The day is marked with a feast in Hindu homes and entrances to the houses are decorated elaborately.
Rosh Hashanah:This holiday is characterized by the blowing of the shofar, a trumpet made from a ram's horn.

Cool Prize Idea:
Foreign Candy Grab Bag

Ball Drop Trivia
Why not get them laughing by playing a game in which they have to try to identify which of their friends a certain fact applies to?

Idea of Game:
Before the party is even underway you will want to create some kind of chart to represent the ball dropping. Again, you can get as fancy as you want, an easy version would be a Christmas ornament attached to a string with a certain amount of loops tied into it. Then you just need a place to hook the string up (simple as a tack in the wall). Then each of the loops in the string represents a correct response. When the ornament is hanging by the last loop in the string the ball has dropped and a team has won. Have each child write down five facts about themselves on five separate note cards, and make sure that you tell them to try and choose facts that they don't think their friends know. Then divide the group into teams, place the facts for each team in the other teams bowl. Pull out the facts one at a time and read them aloud. Have the members of the team work together to try and figure out who the fact applies to on the opposing team. If they match the fact correctly then move their "ball" drop by one loop, if they don't then have the member of the opposing team who the fact applies to reveal themselves and keep going with the game. The first team to have their ball drop wins.

Cool Prize Idea:
Confetti Poppers to use when the ball drops.

Resolution Scavenger Hunt
This is a New Year's twist on a classic party game.

Idea of Game:
Write a list of New Year's resolutions, no matter how serious or how ridiculous. Have the children break off into pairs and give each pair a copy of the list of New Year's resolutions. Tell them to hunt through the house to try and find items that could be representative of each of the New Year's resolutions and write down a short description of each item (or if you want you can give them a small box of crayons and have them draw a picture of each item. Give them a set amount of time to find all the "items" on their list or have them race each other. The team that either finds everything first, or the team that finds the most items, depending on how you choose to run the game, wins.

Cool Prize Idea:
A journal to help them keep track of their own resolutions in the New Year.

Hopefully these game ideas will help you keep the children at your slumber party entertained until the ball drops.