The Best Kid-Friendly New Year’s Eve Party Ideas & Events for Families

Written By Chelsea Miles

Photo Credit: Unsplash - BoliviaInteligente @boliviainteligente

It’s time to ring in 2025 with some creative at home party ideas and local events to make this New Year’s Eve memorable for your family!

  1. Movie Themed Countdown

    Countdown to the New Year with a 2024 movie marathon.

    Movie Suggestions and Food Pairings:

    • Orion and the Dark - Stream on Netflix (Oreo Cookies with candy eyeballs)

    • Kung Fu Panda 4 - Stream on Netflix (Egg rolls or fruit sushi: fruit roll ups wrapped around sliced bananas filled with berries of your choice)

    • IF - Stream on Prime Video or Paramount + (Use your imagination to create your own custom snack using ingredients in your pantry to share with the whole family.)

    • Inside Out 2 - Stream on Disney + (Pick your mood candy and drinks. Get different colored Skittles and/or M &M’s that fit the characters along with Kool-Aid. Everyone picks the color of the character their mood is the closest to at the moment.)

    • Despicable Me - Stream on Peacock (Minions Banana Smoothie)

    • Descendents Rise of Red - Stream on Disney + (Queen of Hearts Cupcakes)

    • Harold and the Purple Crayon - Stream on Netflix (White chocolate dipped pretzels, add purple food coloring to the chocolate for a fun twist.)

    • The Wild Robot - Purchase on Prime Video (Make robots with pretzels and cheese or marshmallows.)

    2. DIY New Year’s Eve Party

    We did this a few years ago when our kids were younger & it was an absolute blast!

    Activities & Supplies:

    • DIY Party Hats - To create festive party hats you’ll need construction paper, tape, string, crayons/markers, stickers and glitter pens.

    • DIY Party Poppers - To create fun party poppers you’ll need toilet paper tubes, paint or crayons or stickers to decorate, a rubber band, balloons cut in half and confetti, or paper cut in small pieces. Attach the half balloon to the end of the toilet paper roll with the rubber band, fill the tube with your confetti or paper then when is noon year’s eve or midnight pull back on the balloon and pop out the confetti to celebrate!

    • DIY Sweet Countdown - This is a fun one for kids that can’t tell time yet. Build a tiered tray for each hour of your countdown. This may be noon for younger kids or midnight for older kids. Every hour you get to enjoy a snack on a tier. Start with small snacks like Skittles or fruit slices then as you move up your tiered tray the snacks should get bigger. You can also make the tiers a progressive dinner starting with appetizers. An idea for the last tier is to make confetti cupcakes filled with sprinkles. You can make easy tiered trays with chargers, small candle sticks and hot glue from Dollar Tree. Make a fun “Happy New Year!” sign to put at the top. This is a great way to help younger kids keep track of how long until the New Year!

    • DIY Sparkling Mocktails- Create alcohol free drinks for your kids as they countdown to the New Year. One idea is to pour Lemon Lime Soda in a wine or champagne glass then purchase or make different color syrups to flavor their sparkling soda to ring in the New Year. An easy way to make your own syrup is to put berries in a sauce pan with a little water and about a cup of sugar on medium heat. Once you cook the berries down you can strain the seeds out of the syrup and add it to your soda!

    • DIY Countdown - Here are some other countdown to New Year’s ideas. Make a countdown Balloon wall. Pop a balloon every hour and fill the final balloon with confetti. Create a countdown chain with a “Welcome to 2025” sign at the end. Each hour remove a chain link until you get to 2025.

    • DIY Time Capsule - This is really fun to do. There are two ways to do this you can complete a time capsule paper that you put away and take out on a specific year to read or you can create a traditional time capsule that includes stuff your kids put in. We did a paper time capsule the year we moved in our house and opened them to read them before we moved out. It was so sweet to read the things the kids wrote. This month on the blog we are offering FREE New Year’s printables. One is a New Year’s Time Capsule printable. New email subscribers will get access to this printable after they subscribe (see below). Existing email subscribers can access this free printable in the Weekly Navigation email that’s sent every week!

    3. Glow Party

    We did a glow party for New Year’s Eve 2021, and it was a lot of fun!

    • Pick the room you want to have your glow party in and replace the lightbulbs with blacklights or party lights. We found a cool disco ball on Facebook Marketplace to add to the fun.

    • Clean the center of the room so there’s plenty of space to dance and play games.

    • Decorate with glow balloons and put up a balloon drop. An alternative to a balloon drop if you have a fan is to put confetti on your fan blades then turn it on at midnight to create a confetti shower!

    • For food try to pick foods with bright colors. Light up ice cubes are a fun touch to drinks.

    • Some fun games to play are freeze dance, trivia and glow charades. Make a glow people dance video by creating a stick figure on your body with glow sticks and tape. You can then create a family dance in the dark and record it.

    • Savings Tip: Glow sticks and glow items are often on sale after Halloween. This is a great time to get deep discounts on these items!

    4. Indoor Camp Out

    This is another fun way to ring in the New Year at home with the whole family!

    • Clear a space that you can set up your tent inside.

    • Grab your sleeping bags and flashlights to tell stories or play games.

    • Roast marshmallows and hot dogs in your fireplace or over a candle.

    • Plan an indoor scavenger hunt or play flashlight hide and seek

    • Celebrate midnight with a confetti popper.

    5. Local New Year’s Eve Fun

    If you’d like to get out for some New Year’s family fun here’s a list of events:

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Chelsea Miles
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