New Year's Eve Family Activities

Looking for New Year’s Eve family activities? Here are five fun and simple activities to enjoy with your family this year!

These New Year’s Eve family activities have become favorites of ours. Having a night together at home has transformed into a special way to celebrate the new year.

If you want all of the instructions and printables, you can purchase them here.

A Helpful Tip

One thing that has worked well for our family is to create our own “midnight.” The thought of my kids staying up until midnight and then enjoying the next day stresses me out! My kids do not sleep in, so I know we need to be practical and wise.

As an alternative, we determine a time to be midnight every year. This year we are saying 9 pm is midnight. Plus, then we can get the kids in bed and my husband and I can relax, enjoy some tasty appetizers, and write out goals for the year.

6 New Year’s Eve Family Activities

Memory Jar

This is a great tradition to start during the New Year! Get a jar and some pieces of paper. Explain to your family that this is your Memory Jar. What this means is that throughout the entire year everyone can write down memories and put them in the jar. Then on New Year’s Eve, you open the jar as a family and read through the memories. We LOVE doing this every year!

Family Photo

We are starting this tradition this year! Every single New Year’s Eve, take a family photo together. This is super casual! Do it selfie style! As a mom, we all know the photo is going to be far from perfect but it is a great way to capture the end of the year.

Print off the photo and put it in a simple photo book. Add to the book every year!

Scavenger Hunt

Have fun at home with a scavenger hunt! At the end have special treats or countdown bags. Use the printable scavenger hunt cards!

Yearly Interview

Interview everyone in your family with some basic interview questions! The Yearly Interview printable is included in the printable pack, so just print it off and have your kids fill it out. This is such a fun way to capture their uniqueness at the end of the year!

Keep these papers with the family photo to reflect on every year!

Create a survival kit.

I love this idea from Coffee, Pancakes, and Dreams to create a New Year’s Eve Survival Kit! It is adorable and kids will absolutely love having all of the fun items in here!

Balloon Drop

Tape a plastic tablecloth to the ceiling, leaving some room for balloons to rest in there. I tapped ours to our ceiling fan. At midnight, pull one side free for the balloons to drop on the kids!

Word of the Year

Take time to choose a word of the year. This is a great activity to do with your kids. I love the tips that Tiffany shares for choosing a word of the year.

Countdown Bags

These are a fun way to countdown and keep the kids busy as you get closer to midnight!

Bags- I used brown lunch bags
Printable Clocks- These are in the Printable Packet. You can write the time these will be opened on the clock.
Items for the Bags- I will share below what is going in our bags! Be creative and pick items that work best for your family! I purchased everything from the Dollar Store!

This is a sample of how you could use the bags! We will be opening them every half hour and starting a little early so we are finished by 9 pm.

Bag 1- Art

Include crayons and paper and instruct the kids to draw their favorite memory of the past year.

Bag 2- Dessert

Include sprinkles to use as a topping for ice cream.

Bag 3- Play Dough

Include Play Dough and Googly Eyes for fun creations

Bag 4- Glasses

Include plastic toasting glasses and stickers to decorate for toasting with juice!

Bag 5- Noisemakers

Include noisemakers for the exciting “midnight moment”.

I hope these ideas help you create some New Year’s Eve family fun! Remember, do what works best for your family! Honestly, I do not think we will do all of this but we will pull a few ideas from it! It helps to create an atmosphere of fun and memories!