New Year’s Kids Celebration

If you are ringing in the New Year with a family party at your home this year, you may find that you have a bunch of kids to entertain.  It will be fun for the adults to have time to gather, socialize, and toast the New Year together.  Yet, how to keep the kids, most likely of different ages, entertained during the long evening to midnight?  Here are some kid-friendly suggestions for a great celebration this year:

• Send a blow horn as the invitation.  When the people blow the horn, attach a piece of paper to the “roll” part of the horn with the party details.  Clever and easy to do!  Make sure to ask everyone to dress up in party gear.
• Instead of decorating the house or the kids’ party room beforehand, have all of the decorations on hand for the kids to do the decorating.  Have balloons, streamers, confetti, party hats, and noisemakers laid out for this first activity.
• Make Party Hats as a craft, or if you are heavy on the little girls, enjoy a New Year’s blinking tiara.

• Make noisemakers using beans, rice, and beads in plastic drink bottles.
• Have T-shirts on hand for the kids to iron-on the New Year, “2009.”
• Kids can put together a collage using magazines and newspaper to remember the past year.
• Make a New Year’s Ornament.
• Make a cake or a batch of cupcakes and have the kids frost and decorate.  Stick a candle in and sing “Happy Birthday” to 2009.  Familyfun.com’s Confetti Cake is a great suggestion.
• Teach them to sing “Auld Lang Syne.”
• If older kids will be there, explain what New Year Resolutions are all about, and have them write there own resolutions that they can take home with them.
• Have board games and card games out for group play.
• Rent some age-appropriate movies for the kids to watch.  Make flavored popcorn balls as a festive treat.

• Create a Happy New Year’s CD Banner.
• Easy meal for the kids is pizza or pasta with sauce, salad and bread sticks.
• Toast the New Year at midnight if the kids are still awake with sparkling apple cider.  Definitely turn on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve Special from NY and watch the Apple fall!