10 Awesome New Years Activities for Kids
As the final day of the year approaches, another New Years’ festivities are on the horizon. How do you and your family intend to say goodbye on December 31st, then hello on January 1st? While adults usually make a point to stay up to shout “Happy New Year!” at the stroke of midnight, this isn’t always so easy for the kids.
There may be some that have no trouble staying up, but usually, for the little ones, their celebration will fall on the first day of the New Year. Regardless of the date and time, you hold New Years’ activities for kids, there are so many different ideas you can work with to keep them entertained. Some of these activities can take place before the celebration’s big day or during.
1. Activity Sheets
There are many templates a person can find that would fit the New Years’ Eve theme that would make it a fun activity for kids. Use it as an opportunity for the child to think about all that’s happened throughout the year. About A Mom has a great selection of review-style printable sheets you can either copy from or use as a source of inspiration to make from scratch.
2. Cootie Catchers
When visiting Nourishing My Scholar, the opportunity to create a New Years themed activity for kids brings forth a popular favorite. This is a great idea for kids to not just make one of their own, but play it as a game with themselves and others as the old year is about to give way for the new one.
3. Midnight Balloon Drop
To help kids get excited for the midnight hour of New Year’s Eve, designing a big balloon drop for them to pull when the time is right is a great activity that doesn’t have to be isolated to just a singular event. When visiting sites like Fun with Balloons, the formula to design your own balloon drop is easy enough to follow. It’s also something kids can easily do as an activity before going through with the actual balloon drop itself.
4. New Years’ Eve Tree
Why not replace the decorations on the Christmas tree with something that rings in the New Year? This would be a fun kid’s activity that allows them to decorate it however they want to. If you’d rather give them their very own tree to do so, that’s easy enough to come by as well.
5. Paper Plate Noise Makers
First, get a pair of paper plates and either a craft stick or popsicle stick. Then, you’ll need some glue and something to put between the paper plates before you glue them together. Some folks use rice while others use dry beans. You can also get away with smaller beads if that is your wish. If you want some color and design on those paper plates, the sky’s the limit here.
Let the kids figure that part out as they explore their creativity to its full potential. Once ready to puzzle this creation together, place what will make the noise on the first plate before firmly gluing the entire edge of the second plate to it. Make sure to have that stick in place as well so that this becomes the second part of an activity that will allow the child to ring in the New Year with some noise.
6. Party Hat Creation
Kids love being creative. Giving them an opportunity to explore how far they can go not only makes it fun for them as an activity but taps into their talent as they hone in on a skill that could pave the way to a future profession. When it comes to celebrating the New Year, party hats are commonplace. Instead of going with whatever the stores are selling, why not let the kids make their own?
The best way to go about this would be to find different pics and designs from a site like Party and Bright and go over all the templates until something is found that works best. After it’s printed, the kids now have the opportunity to apply their own color choices and design ideas to make that hat their own personalized creation.
7. Pick a Prize
Just because Christmas is over doesn’t mean the spirit of gift-giving has to come to an end just yet. As a great activity for kids on New Year’s Eve or Day, especially in a group setting, have a collection of small, wrapped gifts that are easily grabbable. Ideally, it should be the same amount of gifts as the number of children involved. Have them sit around each other on the floor and have the collection of wrapped presents in the center.
By using a pair of dice, each child takes a turn to roll them out with the objective to either score a 7, 11, or doubles. Once this has been accomplished, the child grabs a wrapped gift from the pile and is removed from the game, allowing the remaining players to continue until it comes down to the final two kids.
The final gift that was not picked from the pile goes to the final kid. In this game, there is the option to either allow each child to open up their chosen prize once they receive it or cause them to wait until all the gifts have been claimed. Should you go with the option of the gifts remaining unopened to the end, you can add a twist to it by allowing the final child to decide whether or not to stick with the last prize that nobody else chose or exchange with any of the kids who picked their prize first.
In that rule, whichever prize the child picks from the other works as a fair exchange. If you’re confident the kids in the group are good with this rule, it does add a bit more fun to the experience.
8. Reflection Cards
Usually, on New Year’s Eve, it is a time spent reflecting upon all the events that took place throughout the year. With kids, you can easily make a game out of it that will be entertaining for them, and perhaps even for the adults. If you visit the website belonging to Healthy Happy Impactful, you will find a good list of questions that can be added to their own cards.
The design of creating a deck of reflection cards can involve the kids if there is a decorative scheme in mind. Treating this deck of cards like a game with the kids can be easily pulled off by questions and answers that they’ll find entertaining.
9. Wishing Wall
You can either use post-it notes for this, or cut up pieces of paper with tape to design a wishing wall that’s perfectly themed for the New Year. Kids love to make wishes, so the opportunity to do this as they’re creating a platform to put their wishes on display is one activity that’s sure to keep them entertained.
The best way to go about this is to get a large sheet of cardboard paper and affix it to the wall for the kids to access. The kids can then use sticky notes to write down a wish and post it on cardboard paper, starting at the top left corner. This continues until there is no more room for additional sticky notes.
These wishes can also double as resolutions, especially if the kids are chasing after personal goals they’ve set for themselves. Goals such as graduating from their current school level might be something they’re wishing to do, as well as reaching a perfect score on a test. It’s whatever they’re wishing for as that’s what this activity is supposed to be about.
10. Word Search
Whether downloaded as a template or put together by programs that let you puzzle together your New Year’s themed word search, this is an activity bound to challenge kids and keep them entertained. If you already know what words you’d like to use in the puzzle creation, great. If not, Puzzles-to-Print has a good one you can work with.
