5 New Year’s Eve Games for Family to Make the Time Fly By Until Midnight

Whoever spends the turn of the year with the family should definitely have a few good New Year’s Eve games for family ready! These 5 games will not only thrill the little ones and make the time until midnight fly by.

Anyone who spends New Year’s Eve with children has to be prepared for different things than without. This means not only taking the utmost care when setting off fireworks, but also organising the evening differently.

Because while some New Year’s Eve games for adults involve a drink or two, good New Year’s Eve games for family naturally remain quite well-behaved. But they are just as much fun, and not necessarily just for the little ones!

Best 5 New Year’s Eve Games For Family

In our selection, we made sure that the games only require simple materials that just about everyone has on hand at home.

1. The Balloon Countdown

• Participants: any
• Material: 5 – 6 helium-filled balloons, sharpie, paper and pen, hole punch, string.

Tie the helium balloons to objects heavy enough to hold them on the floor or on a table. Write a time on each balloon with a sharpie. For example, if you have 6 balloons, you can choose every full hour from 19:00 to 0:00. Alternatively, the last balloon can simply bear the new year.

At the respective time, the children can take turns to take one of the balloons, write down a secret wish, attach the folded piece of paper to it and let it rise into the night sky. For pre-school children, a parent can of course do the writing or the child can draw his or her wish on the note.

The last balloon is then released together at midnight!

2. Orange Course

• Players: 3+
• Material: 1 – 2 oranges.

All the children (and adults) playing form a circle. One player clamps the orange between his head and shoulder. The player on the left now has to take the orange between his head and shoulder without using his hands.

Depending on the age and skill of the children, you can also set up obstacles or a course where the orange has to be carried under a table, for example.

If the orange falls off one of the players, he or she gets a penalty point and the one who has the fewest at the end wins.

If there is an even number of players and enough participants (6+), 2 teams can also compete against each other.

3. New Year’s Eve Olympics

• Players: 2+
• Material: Salt sticks, peanut flips, confetti, streamers, etc.

You can also bridge the wait for the big fireworks with a small New Year’s Eve Olympics. A New Year’s Eve Olympics actually includes several small New Year’s Eve games for family and their scope can be adapted as desired.

The disciplines of the New Year’s Eve Olympics can be, for example:

• Salt stick eating contest, without using hands and without crumbling
• Doughnut eating contest with hands joined behind the back (only over a plate of course)
• Who can gargle the most verses of a song?
• Toss peanut flips in the air and catch them with your mouth – Who can get the most hits in 10 attempts?
• Confetti throw (only if you have a good hoover… ;-))
• Who can blow a streamer the farthest away from them?
• Who can tie a scarf around someone else the quickest with just one hand?
• Etc.
• There are no limits to your ideas here, for inspiration you can also check out our Home Olympics game.

4. Food Roulette

• Players: 2+.
• Materials: Large plate, as many spoons as possible, different foods, paper and pencil, blindfolds.

In preparation for this game, prepare as many different foods as possible in bite-sized pieces or portions on spoons, e.g. cubes of cheese, pieces of sausage, small morsels of fruit and vegetables, etc.

All the children who are playing are now blindfolded. At random, each child is given a spoon or is fed with it. Each player now has to guess what it is and whispers the supposedly correct answer into the ear of the game leader.

Whether the answers were right or wrong is written down on a prepared piece of paper behind the children’s names. Whoever has tasted the most food correctly at the end is the winner.

5. Looking Into the Future

• Players: 2+
• Material: A glass ball, an upside-down vase or similar and a lot of imagination, possibly accessories for a fortune-teller costume (turban, headscarf, creoles, etc.).

Mum or dad dress up as a fortune teller (whoever is better at telling stories) and now look into the future of each family member in the new year. To set the mood, a glass ball or an upside-down bulbous glass vase is an ideal prop.

Now one prophesies what is to come in the following year, relying of course on one’s own plans. For example, one “sees” in the sphere a trip to a place by the sea, a school start, a child’s birthday, a visit to grandma’s in the country, etc.

What also goes down well with children: prophesying one or two completely crazy stories, the funnier the better!

You can also be very mysterious and say that you don’t really know what’s going to happen, but it has something to do with a school bag. The kids will then add to it on their own and help the oracle with their associations… 🙂

And now have fun and above all a happy new year!

Looking for more New Year’s Eve games for family or general New Year’s Eve ideas? Then browse a bit more on our blog, for example in our family board games.

By the way, you can also find tips for leisure time activities with children, with friends or as a couple all year round on Abenteuer Freundschaft.

If you like our page, we would be very happy about your Like on Facebook! By the way, we are also on Instagram. 😉