My 5 Favorite Ways to Celebrate New Year’s Eve with Kids

While New Year’s Eve is traditionally associated with sipping champagne and staying up past midnight, kids still love it. I always did (still do!), and found lots of fun in all the traditions (I have old family photos of us wearing lampshades our heads . . . And no, those have not been posted for “Throwback Thursday”).

Here are five fun ways to make the memories of good times last a lifetime:

Make Resolutions

This is a great way to teach kids how to set goals and stick to them. Make resolutions, and show them to your kids. As you achieve your goals throughout the year, share your accomplishments with your kids – you’ll become such a wonderful role model to them when you truly walk the walk.

Early Midnight Celebrations

For most kids, bedtime is well before midnight. So they don’t gripe about being banished to bed while everyone else is still up and partying, celebrate the turning of the year as if you were in another country. For instance, if you live in New York and it’s 6:00 PM, in France, it’s midnight! Therefore, it’s already New Year’s Day (albeit somewhere else)! So at 6PM, watch the live Paris celebrations on the news, don berets, break out the French fries, and yell, “Happy New Year!”

Dress Up and Have a Mocktail

New Year’s Eve is all about the parties. Have one at home, complete with pointy hats, tiaras, noisemakers, poppers, and confetti. Make your children’s favorite dinner and serve it with sparking apple cider in fancy plastic picnic champagne flutes.

Bake a Good Luck Cake

In Greece, they serve Vasilopita (a small cake) at midnight. It’s baked with a coin inside (in similar fashion to the New Orleans King Cake served at Mardi Gras). It’s believed that whoever receives the piece with the coin will have good luck throughout the year. Make one at home and spread the good fortune.

Before and After Photos

Take a fun photo of your child on December 31st as a goodbye to the old year, then another one on January 1st to welcome in the new one. Ask them to spot the differences, which can lead to some fun exercising of their imaginations.

How do you celebrate New Year’s Eve with the kiddos?