The highlight of most New Year’s celebrations is the eventual countdown to midnight and the ringing in of a new year. To ensure that your guests don’t tire of the festivities before this event, plan an assortment of New Year’s games to keep them engaged and pumped for the new year. By playing games, you not only provide guests a diversion that ensures that the hours before midnight don’t drag, but you also help your guests get better acquainted.
Resolution Match-Up
Get guests acquainted with a resolution match-up game. As guests enter your party, give them each slips of paper, and ask them to jot down their resolutions, folding the papers and placing them in a hat upon completion. Once all your guests have arrived, pull out the hat and start reading the resolutions aloud. Challenge guests to guess which fellow party goer made each resolution. Do this by numbering the resolutions and asking guests to write down their pairings. As guests move through the process, they will develop an enhanced understanding of what matters to their fellow party guests.
New Year’s Word Scramble
Test your guests’ mental capacities as you prepare to enter the New Year with a New Year’s word scramble game. To prepare this game, create a list of words or phrases related to the new year or the New Year’s celebrations, such as “champagne,” “ball drop” or “resolution.” Jumble the letters in each of these words, typing up a list of your jumbled terms. Create copies of this list. As guests sit down to enjoy some New Year’s appetizers, give them each a copy of your prepared list. Give guests a set amount of time to unscramble the words. Reward the guest who correctly unscrambles the most terms in the allotted time.
Pop in the New Year
Ring in the new year with some appropriate noise in a New Year’s game. Before your event, write or type the numbers that make up the year you are about to enter. Create 10 copies of each number in the date. Fold these numbers, and slip them into balloons, creating a group of 40 number-filled balloons.
When game time arrives, divide guests into teams of three to four members each. Spread your balloons out on the floor, and challenge guests to work with their teams to pop the balloons and gather the numbers that make up the year they are celebrating the entry to. Reward the team that successfully completes this task first with a special prize, such as a New Year’s crown.
