How To Spend New Year’s Eve With Young Kids

There are four camps of families for New Year’s. Those who go out and leave the kids with a babysitter; those who just treat it like a normal night and go to bed at normal time; those who celebrate a it earlier with the kids who go to bed at a reasonable hour; and those who get the kids to stay up to midnight and celebrate all night.

We fit into the third group where we celebrate with the kids, just a bit earlier than midnight and then put them to bed while we carry on the celebrations up to and slightly past midnight.

Here are 7 ways that you can celebrate New Year’s with your kids on 31st December:

1. Create a balloon pop countdown. Every hour, pop another balloon to see what activity the kids can do that hour. It sounds fun but you have to come up with loads of activities, some people even have 12 balloons and it just seems like a lot of work. I also am not a fan of balloons due to their environmental impact. I don’t mind balloons so much if they can be played with for days or sometimes even months later in our house, but popping balloons straightaway doesn’t sit right with me.
2. Put together a sparkly New Year’s Tray. You could have the numbers for the incoming year in amongst some coloured chickpeas or rice. And let your little one scoop and pour the bits around the tray. My 3-year-old could spend up to an hour just playing with this by herself.
3. Create some fireworks art using paint and used kitchen/toilet roll tubes. This one is fun and they can use loads of bright colours. It doesn’t always work as perfectly as you see on Instagram but it’s still a fun process for them.
4. Play “beer” pong. We got 21 plastic beer cups (I know! Paper would have been better.) and placed them in a triangle on the table. On the base of each cup, we wrote a random number and then we bounced ping pong balls into the cups. We then added up the scores to see who won. It was so much fun and we were able to play with with ages 3 up to 70+.
5. Decorate cupcakes. You could even make the cakes together too but decorating them can be a quicker activity. We used food colouring, icing sugar and water and our 3-year-old picked the colour, mixed it up and put it on the cakes. She then chose which sprinkles to use and put them on too.
6. Dress up in sparkly party clothes no matter whether you’re staying in or going out. This is fun. We don’t often go out to parties as a family so getting dressed up in our favourite party clothes made a great change. My 3-year-old even got to have some nail varnish on too.
7. Get some board games out. Find some age-appropriate games or ones where your kids can join with an adult and have a great family games night. We played Colour Brain and Pentago and although aimed at older kids and adults, our little one could join in and have a go.

The main thing for New Year’s is to do what’s best for your family. If you know that your kids are not going to cope with staying up til midnight and are going to be a nightmare the next day, then cut the evening short and have a fake New Year’s celebration with some fireworks off Youtube, some apple juice in plastic glasses and a bit of a celebration. Then, take them to bed and once asleep, the adults can carry on with the celebrations. If your kids will be fine being up, then celebrate along with them.