Celebrate New Year’s Eve with Kids

Will you have the opportunity to spend New Year’s Eve with your grandchildren?  This could be a great opportunity to have lots of FUN!!!

This is a time to get rid of your ‘but-grandmothers-don’t-do-that-kind-of-thing’ attitude.

Be zany!  Be creative!  Be outta this world!

Lest you are at a loss for ideas of what to do, here are a few to jump start your thinking.  (And, make sure you have plenty of crepe paper streamers, balloons, noise makers, and confetti). 

As always, adapt and modify your activities according to the ages of your grandchildren.

• For young grandchildren, move the clock ahead a couple of hours.  This way, they can celebrate the ringing in of the New Year but still get to bed before midnight (and before they are too tired and cranky).
• Get glow in the dark sticks to wave outside at midnight. (Fun for ANY age!)
• Have a dress up party with fun clothes, hats, tiaras, jewelry, cowboy boots, whatever.  Kids love to dress up and doing it only on Halloween just isn’t quite often enough for their dress-up souls.  Make sure you and Grandpa dress up, too!
• Have a pajama parade at midnight with your grandchildren wearing the new pajamas they got at Christmas.  (If they didn’t get new ones, maybe you could give them some and have all the more reason to parade!)  If you can, find fun masks for them to wear as they parade around.
• Do the Bubble Wrap Stomp.  Buy sheets of bubble wrap used for packing.  At midnight, put on some lively music, put the bubble wrap on the floor, and stomp away.
• Make your own noise makers by putting dried beans or rice in cans or cardboard tubes or empty pop bottles and decorate the outside of the container.  Shake the containers wildly at midnight.
• Have a Dino-Mite Dance.  Make dinosaur masks for your little mites to wear while doing the Bunny Hop, the Hokey Pokey, the Funky Chicken, The Macarena, the Limbo (how low can Grandma go???).  To get copies of these songs, go to the iTunes store where they cost only 99 cents per song.  Burn them to a CD and then play the songs for your party.  (You can then pull out the CD and dance anytime during the year with your grandchildren!  Yes, Grandpa, even YOU can dance these types of dances with the grandkids!)
• For the granddaughters, have a jewelry making night.  Go to a local craft store and get beads and baubles for them to make bracelets, necklaces, and earrings.
• Have a cheese or chocolate fondue.

Here are some previous activities that I have written about that you could do:

• Play Fox and Geese. This could be a fun challenge if there isn’t much moonlight . . . Wear glow in the dark necklaces made out of the sticks! Then, come in and warm up with hot chocolate and donuts.
• Play Zilch.
• Play Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
• Play the Cup Rythm game.
• Play Panic.
• Play the Candy Bar game.

Last night we were spontaneous (yes, we are spontaneous on occasions).  We played card games with our neighbors.  They had two games that we hadn’t heard of before:  Category and Wizards.  Teen-aged grandchildren would enjoy playing these games.

What ever you do, may you have fun (and be safe) strengthening your relationship with your grandchildren while playing with them on New Year’s Eve!