Celebrate New Year’s Eve as a [Happy] Family
Two things tend to be true about New Year’s Eve: It seldom lives up to the hype, and it tends to be an adults-only affair. Maybe the solution to the first truism is upending the second one.
“Having kids in the mix at a New Year’s bash brings the fun vibrations to new heights,” family-focused blogger Meredith Sinclair told Today a few years ago.
Of course, bringing the kids into the celebration takes more than simply letting them stay up late. To make it a truly memorable event, plan kid-friendly activities that the whole family can enjoy. Following are some suggestions.
Make it a poppin’ evening! Buy balloons and put confetti in each one with a slip of paper with a fun activity or challenge written on it. Pop one balloon every hour, bringing on a shower of confetti and something fun for everyone to do.
Create a time capsule. Get a container for each person and invite them to put in something to help them remember the past year, and a note with predictions for the coming year. Put the boxes away for opening next New Year’s Eve.
Travel the world. Follow New Year’s Eve celebrations around the planet online or on TV, gathering everyone to watch the parties in other regions as each hour passes. Or, get a world map and mark locations and the times the New Year will start in different places. Celebrate each hour with a new part of the world.
Invent hors d’oeuvres. Put a variety of edibles on the table and challenge everyone to create tasty hors d’oeuvres for each other … doing your best to discourage the kids’ inclinations toward grossing each other out.
Change the clock. If your little ones are too little to stay up till midnight, move the clocks up a couple of hours and have a full-blown ball-drop celebration on their schedule. Mix special drinks, give everyone party favors and snacks and make it a night to remember.
Capture the goofiness. Spend the early part of the evening crafting clothes, disguises, decorations and more for a do-it-yourself photo booth. Then, just before midnight, get everyone’s pictures at their year-end wackiest.
The added bonus to these ideas? With a kid-friendly New Year’s Eve, you’re a lot less likely to wake up on New Year’s Day with a headache. And that could get the whole year off to a better start.
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Tags: Celebrations, family, Holiday Season, New Year