At Home With Kids This New Year’s Eve? Here’s How to Welcome 2018

Celebrate New Year’s a little hatke with your family this year.

While newspapers and social media are flooded with parties for adults this New Year’s Eve, parents have little option, and most choose to celebrate it at home. But while you spend New Year’s with your kids at home, let it not be an evening where you only “Netflix and Chill”! Turn it into a fun-filled activity for the entire family. Here are a few games that you can plan for New Year’s Eve that will transform it into an evening of fun.

Timeline Of Memories

Have a collection of pictures depicting memories from the year gone by, and hide them around the house.

Try to have at least one picture from one month so you have twelve in all. Let your kids hunt for the pictures and gather all of them. Once they have collected all the pictures, ask them to arrange these pictures in order of their occurrence, starting with January.

This exercise will help create a timeline of memories where the family can take a trip down the memory lane. Ask the kids to string the photos and hang them on the wall. Make sure you take a snap of this so that you can hang one final picture at the end of the timeline.

Make Your Own Mocktail

Think of a mocktail. Perhaps something like “Winter Magic” or “Summer Fun”, and let kids prepare their own interpretation of a mocktail.

Arrange a range of juices, soft drinks as well as fruits. You could have cherries and flowers too for the kids to decorate their drinks with. After the kids have prepared their drink, have a panel to judge each of the drinks. The one that comes closest to describing the mocktail, wins.

This will also be a creative exercise that will trigger the child’s imagination. For instance, if you have asked the kids to prepare “Summer Fun”, make sure he uses mango or watermelon juices or simply fruits that are associated with summer. Similarly, winter magic could have juices topped with fruits like apples, strawberry etc.

Song And Dance

Since New Years’ Eve is associated with song and dance, make sure you have a game where kids can sing and dance. Arrange for a karaoke set for kids. One such set, called “Little Pretender Karaoke Stage Microphone” is easily available on Amazon. Just plug in any device to the karaoke system and let the kids pick their choice of song. You could also set up a playlist of songs that have New Year’s theme or songs that are about New Year’s.

Divide the children into sets of two. One child sings, while the other can dance. Award can go to the best couple. Since New Year’s is a noisy event associated with fireworks, music and dance, this game will more than double up for it.

Guess The Resolution

Once the kids arrive for the party, ask them to write their resolution on a piece of paper. Place the resolutions into a bowl and then pull them out one at a time and read them aloud. With each resolution you read, ask the kids to guess the person who wrote it? The one who makes the maximum number of correct guesses, wins.

Have a very happy New Year’s! If you’ve got some more games, please free to let us know.

(A freelance food and fashion blogger, Pranjali Bhonde Pethe aims at getting people and their favourite food and style closer through her blog moipalate. Email her at [e-mail] and follow her on @moipalate.)