Family New Year’s Eve Activities
These family New Years Eve activities can be put together at the last minute! Best of all, they can be done for a NOON Year’s Eve party, like we did, or anytime you want to celebrate the New Year! This post contains affiliate links which I earn a small commission from if purchases are made through them.
The night before New Year’s Eve I was laying in bed and realized that I hadn’t planned anything for New Year’s Eve! New Year’s Eve was on a Sunday this year and so I knew we would go to church, and since we don’t shop or eat out on Sunday, I needed to come up with fun activities that we could do at home. So, I started thinking of a few last minute activities we could do and then the next morning just threw it all together. We had such a fun celebrating as a family that I want to make it a tradition. These are last minute New Year’s Eve ideas that you can do with one child or 12 and everyone will have fun!
We decided to start our party at 9:00 am (our church isn’t until 1:00 pm) because no matter how late our kids stay up, they always wake up between 6:00 – 6:30 am. So, staying up late for them is fun, but not for us as parents. I hung simple black balloons in front of a gold foil fringe backdrop that I had leftover from another party. Each balloon had a time written on it in 30 minute increments. At that time, we let one of the kids pop the balloon that would start the next activity. If we finished with time to spare, we turned on music and had a dance break while we cleaned up one activity and set up the next.
Family New Year’s Eve Activities
9:00 – Paint or Draw Your Favorite Memory from the Last Year
I got out lots of art supplies and we talked about all of the fun things we had done the last year. Then they painted pictures of their favorite memories. My daughter painted a picture of her and my husband riding Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland and my son painted a very interpretive picture of the new black truck he got for Christmas.
9:30 – Board Games
My kids are really into board games right now. We played a rousing game of Candy Land and a few rounds of Yeti in my Spaghetti (we just got it for Christmas and my kids LOVE it!).
10:00 – Craft Party Hats
I pulled out my stash of feathers, pom poms, chenille stems, markers and cardstock paper. At this point my son was throwing a fit about wanting to keep playing board games, so I made a hat for him with my daughter. We had a great time.
10:30 – New Year Family Bucket List
This was my personal favorite activity. I use a poster board and we talked about all of the things we wanted to do, places we want to go, things we want to learn and things we are willing to try. It was fun to hear each kid come up with ideas for our family bucket list.
11:00 – Balloon Animals
Sheesh, these are much harder than they look! Ammirite?! Next time we eat at Brick Oven I’m going to pay the poor kid that comes around to our table more than $1.00 for a balloon creation! We managed to come up with a few shapes. The hand pump balloon inflation tool is a MUST with these skinny little balloons. My kids were more than happy with them and didn’t care that they looked nothing like anything resembling something. I need to invest in one of these Balloon Animal kits that come with instructions!
11:30 – Lunch
We took a break to have some yummy lunch before the main event!
12:00 – Dr Pepper Toast and Party Horns
We wanted a proper and happy send off to the year, so naturally, we toasted with Dr. Pepper. The kids were so excited to do “clinks” with the plastic champagne flutes I had left over from this party. We shouted “CHEERS” and danced around the house with party horns until my daughter tripped with one in her mouth and injured the roof of her mouth with it. Good heavens, you know what they say, “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.” But it was the perfect representation of our family. We try. We try to have fun and make memories and occasionally we have bumps in our road, but we keep on keeping on. It wasn’t a fancy party, certainly not pinterest worthy, but we had a great time together and that is what matters!
Thanks to all of you that followed along with our fun on Instagram. I shared each activity in my stories as they happened. Follow along in our crazy, last minute attempts at fun!