There are lots of great reasons to throw a kid's New Years Eve Party. There is providing an experience that kids can talk about for years to come, trading off with other parents for that night off, and of course, just having a good time with your kids. Planning the greatest party of the century can be stressful or it can be fun. I suggest you sit back, have fun, and take a few of these fun and exciting tips. You can make the perfect kids New Years Party.
Invitations
For most kids, the party starts with the invitation. It is best if there is something unusual about it. It needs to be something exciting and different. Making an invitation fun can be as simple as adding confetti to a card envelope. If you are making invitations you can get as creative as you want. You can even employ your own kids (or friends' kids) in the making of the New Years Eve cards, bringing out pain and glitter. Make sure that your invitations include all necessary information. Who is invited (you may need to tactfully inform parents if siblings can not come, though for this situation, the more the better). What they need to bring. If this is going to be a sleep over you will want sleeping bags, night clothes, and tooth brushes.
Possible Themes
Themes for a New Years Eve party aren't necessary. You can just go with the flow and use the holiday as the theme, or you can get crazy and do any number of themes. You could do a history related theme (since a new year has come). It could be based on a famous and important person in history or it can be based on a certain year or decade. You can add decorations to this theme, or even costumes (as long as you give plenty of notice to parents). Other options can be color themes (blue and silver, red and white). However, I suggest sticking with colors, and the New Year.
Decorations
For a New Years Eve party the decorations should start with balloons and lots of them. Helium balloons are preferable, but not necessary. Additional options can be inexpensive crape paper, left over Christmas garland, confetti, and of course the hats, tiaras, funny shaped glasses, and other items to wear. Kids love wearing decorations and dressing up. From the simplest of party hats to the craziest of designs you can have a lot of fun decorating the kids. Add hats, blowers, noise makers, glasses, and even feather boas in your color theme choice for a fantastic fun, and interesting party.
Party Foods
Party foods for kids often depends on your age groups. Generally no matter the age group party foods should be fairly easy to recognize or have something interesting about them that makes them desirable. Many kids don't want to try new things, so having a wide variety of foods is often helpful. As long as the kids come to the party having had dinner, you can provide a wide range of “junk” food, mixed in with healthy alternatives for those who will eat them. Keep everything simple, easy to grab, and try and limit the mess.
Start healthy. Most kids don't want to eat healthy, especially at a party, so don't get carried away unless you want lots of left overs. Some healthy foods are veggies and dip, sliced apples (add caramel apple dip and most will eat them), bananas and other fruit.
Keeping other food easy and trying to aim for less mess is often hard. Some ideas that are only moderately messy but are easy to prepare are popcorn, nuts or nut and fruit mixes (toss together nuts, dried fruits, seeds, and even m & m's for a great mix in a bowl), dinner mints or other small candies (red hots look great if you are doing a red and white theme), pizza rolls (easy to prepare, a little messy, but usually a big hit), pigs in a blanket, muffins, and even chicken nuggets or sandwiches (these can be cut with cookie cutters into fun shapes!) are good ideas. Aim for easy and remember that there will be picky eaters.
Don't forget cake and ice cream. After all what is a great celebration without cake and ice cream? Want to get fancy, do cupcakes and make decorating them part of the celebration, or even sugar cookies. You can make both ahead of time and add frosting, sprinkles, and candies to them as a great way to pass the time!
Now for beverage ideas. It is best that you make a punch, provide juice and water. This gives the kids something nice without getting too fancy. You can buy hi-c or you can make your own punch mix. Our favorite is hi-c fruit punch, sprite, a splash of pulp free orange juice and a splash of lemon or lime juice, top it all of with sherbet. It is fun, beautiful, and fairly easy. You can also top it with frozen fruit like strawberries or raspberries. Save a really special drink and special glasses for the toast.
Activities
Planning activities can be hard. You may have different age groups involved, and of course the goal is to make it till midnight. Your activities should start out slower and end up more excited. This will help kids make it till midnight which is a goal they will enjoy accomplishing.
One idea that takes up a nice amount of time is a movie. It should be near the start of the party, this can give you time to finish preparing food or later activities. Some great kid movies that have come out recently that are funny enough and enjoyable to watch even if you have seen them before would be “Meet the Robinsons” and “Ratitouee”. These can be rented if you do not own one, and is a great way to start the night.
Arts and Crafts.
Arts and crafts can be a wide variety of things. Doing something that relates to the party will go off better then throwing something random or educational into the mix, unless of course you have something educational that relates to the new year.
You can of course decorate cookies or cupcakes, as suggested above. This can be a lot of fun. Frosting can be bought in tubes or made from powdered sugar, margarine or butter, and a dab of milk. You don't have to get some fancy perfected recipe, just mix the softened margarine or butter with about 1 tablespoon of milk (less if you are going to color your frosting with food coloring) and then add powdered sugar to the desired consistency. You can easily add food coloring to this for a wide range of colors and put it in bowls, either real or disposable and place around the table. Add candies and sprinkles of several different kinds and let the kids have fun making their own dessert.
Another idea is to make shakers and noise makers. These can be done with rice, beans, beads, pasta, and pretty much any container. Baby food jars, film canisters, and smaller containers work best. You can provide the materials to make the noise maker, and then help the kids to decorate it with sequins, glitter, construction paper, foam pieces, even felt or small scraps of material. Really the imagination is the world on this one. Whatever you can find around the house will make this a great opportunity to use it. If you can't find enough containers you can ask each child to bring their own. Make sure the parents know the types of containers and the purpose is so they can help the child find something appropriate. Later these can be used during the count down and shortly after ward to celebrate.
You can also make your own party hats, or decorate store bought ones. There are several patterns available online. If you are looking for something really easy, buy the cardboard kind from a party store, which can be purchased for really cheap, and use these to decorate. Once again all types of things can be used to decorate these projects, even beans, rice, pasta, glitter, whatever you have around the house.
Make decorations. You can cut out numbers for the year. This year you would want several 2's, even more 0's, and some 8's. These can be decorated by the kids and hung up on the wall. Use poster tacky to make it hang, but not leave a mess on the wall. Kids love seeing their art work used as decorations.
Play dough is another option. You can make inexpensive play dough right at home. There are a variety of different recipes some producing smoother dough and requiring cooking and others just mixing. For this night you can just mix the dough, although if you want to keep it, it would probably be worth making the good kind. You can find a lot of recipes online if you wish. Our favorite is:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 tablespoon alum
1 cup water
2 tablespoon oil
liquid food coloring
Mix dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together, but separate of the dry ones. Slowly pour wet ingredients into the dry while mixing and kneading dough. Add more flour if too sticky. Keep refrigerated. If you have a large group you can make multiple batches with different colors.
Games.
Balloon Volley Ball. This game can be done several ways. You can set up two teams and have them bounce the volley ball back and forth trying to get it to land on the other team's side or you can have several balloons and have them try to keep all of them off the floor. At this point you can call the floor lava and the furniture sharp rocks. If they loose a balloon on either of these it is destroyed, though you can just confiscate it for a period. The goal should be to keep all of the balloons up in the air and the whole group works as a team to do that. It often eliminates the “winners” and “losers”. These games should be played without helium balloons, though if you have an older group the regular balloon volley ball can be played with helium balloons for a challenge.
Sardines. Is a type of hide and seek where one person hides. Everyone quietly looks for the one person and when they find them they have to squeeze into the hiding place with them. As the group all tries to squeeze into the same hiding place it gets to be a lot of fun. The last person to find the group is the person who hides next time around. This is especially good to play outside, in the dark, with lots of hiding places. It gets everyone out and about and it gets them some fresh air. It often rejuvenates the group for the rest of the evening.
Pin the Number. This is an interesting version of pin the tail on the donkey. Rather then having a donkey and a tail you can have a blank piece of paper. Cut out construction paper numbers, one 2, two 0's, and one 8. Trace the shapes onto the blank piece of paper, if it is large, or several pieces of blank paper if you have normal sized paper. Cut the numbers into pieces. There should be one piece for each kid plus four or five extras. Trace the outlines of the pieces onto the blank paper so that it shows the puzzle that the pieces make. Have the kids draw a piece and find where their piece fits. One at a time have them show their piece, and where it fits to the group, and then have them blind folded. The group should try and direct the kids to pin his or her piece in its proper place. Pins or tape can work for this project. This is best suited for older kids and can be a laugh. Watch closely for frustration though as some kids feel very frustrated to have everyone yelling, “no, no, not there…”
Treasure Hunt. Treasure hunts are fun no matter what age group or when. You can draw maps or have clues for finding the treasure. Clues is easier to put together. You can either get ideas off the internet or come up with your own. Split the group up into several smaller groups of 2-4 depending on the size of your party. Each group should start with a single clue, they can be the same or different. Have them follow the series of clues to the finish. If you have a group that you are worried will have a problem with winning and loosing, do several different hunts so everyone finds the prize.
Marco Polo. Marco Polo is a very popular water game played in the lake or pool. It can be played on land as well. Blind fold “Marco” and move any furniture that may be easily tipped over. Then have “Marco” call out. Encourage the “Polos” to call out and to move around the couch or love seat or table. This makes it fun as “Marco” bumps around in the dark. This game is most fun in the house.
Musical Chairs or Upset the Fruit Basket. Depending on the size of your group musical chairs can be a fun option. If you have a large group (ten or more) you can mix it up by playing upset the fruit basket. In this variety assign each member to a group of fruit. You could have apples, oranges, and bananas for example (more fruit can be added depending on the size of your party). There should be three or four people in each group. As in musical chairs you will need one chair for each child (if playing with the couch you can place construction paper on the seats that are no longer available, or start with construction paper there and then remove it). Call out the name of one group. They will get up and move about. Remove a chair or place seating. Then call out he name of the fruit again. At this time they will scramble for a seat and the fruit that doesn't have one will be out.
The Toast
By this time your New Years Eve party should have been a fun hit. But since it is New Years Eve and it will end with the beckoning of the New Year, it has to end special. The toast is the perfect way to do that. The toast is most fun in fancy glasses. This can be champagne glasses (the plastic disposable type) or fancy plastic glasses. Use sparkling grape juice like champagne or have ginger ale. Another great idea is chocolate milk; you can even dress this up with a beautiful whipped cream “flower”. Whatever you do make it special and different then the drinks provided throughout the party. Make sure there is a toast, you can say something, invite others to say something, make it fun. You can either watch the ball drop in Times Square, or count down to New Years right there at your party. Then make sure you clink glasses and drink! Providing a couple of different special drinks may be more difficult, but it will help with the pickiness issue.
Ending the Night.
After the toast you can send the kids out to run around for a few, at least those who have energy and you can then have everyone go to bed. If they are still too energetic, as some may be, get out all the blankets in the house and challenge them to make a fort or blanket tent to sleep under. If this is something you plan ahead you can even have everyone bring a blanket or two from home. The more people there are, the bigger the challenge. Make sure you have some place for sleepier guests to go, since some kids get grumpy when tired.
Fun Favors to Take Home!
The perfect way to end this great party is to make sure that the kids go home with reminders. If you made anything during the party, such as decorations, shakers, or hats, send these home as favors. You can also send home candy bags, the prize that they found in the treasure hunt, leftover cookies and or cupcakes, and a few extra inexpensive favors. Make sure you include anything you bought for them to wear, such as hats, glasses, boas, or such. Add a cute bag, this is something else you can decorate during the party and it can be as simple as a paper lunch bag or a paper grocery sack. Your other favors might be small toys, crowns, whistles, noise makers, pompoms, candy bags, or bubbles.
New Years is a great time for a great party, but it doesn't have to be the only time you use these suggestions. You can have this much fun at birthday parties, occasional sleep over parties, and any time you just want to party. Remember, have fun!
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