Noon Year's Eve Party Ideas

Don’t want to stay up until midnight with the littles? Hold a Noon Year’s Eve party before lunch with these fun ideas and links!

This was an idea we had last year, but never got around to putting up. Basically, my kids never make it until midnight, and let’s be honest, these days I don’t either. Noon Year’s Eve is a fix for that, with the addition of being pretty easy to set up so you can spend your time having fun!

Our Noon Year’s Eve this year will consist of coloring and wearing funny hats, popping balloons and practicing our good habits, and a balloon drop followed by the traditional drinking of sparkling cider from fancy glasses. This takes about an hour from start to finish, and you’ll be done in time for lunch!

The Activities

2021 Hats

Party and Bright has 4 adorable hat designs that are completely free to print out, so you know what we’ll be coloring this year! Last year, I set the kids to coloring their hats while I set up the balloon drop. We were finished at about the same time.

4 printable diy new years hats 2021 — Image courtesy of Party and Bright.

Balloon Habit Pop

The new year is always about resolutions. In our house, we use it as a reminder to continue the good habits we’ve made into the next year. For this activity, I printed out these cards, put them in balloons, then taped the balloons to a giant piece of cardboard and numbered them. I gave the kids each a pin and allowed them to pop the balloons. We recovered the paper from the popped balloon, read about the habit we wanted to remember this next year, and did a little “practice” movement.

These practice movements were things like pretending to wash our hands while singing “Happy Birthday,” pretending to brush our teeth, doing some jumping jacks to remind us to move our bodies, and so on. Each action took a couple of seconds, and with each balloon pop, we added another action.

Balloon Drop and Cider Toast

The balloon drop was the most labor intensive part of this. To make it, you’ll need the following:

large trash bag or plastic tablecloth
12 balloons
yarn
masking tape

Start by cutting the trash bag so it lays flat. If you’re using a tablecloth, you can skip this step.

Then, tape 3 of the corners of your trash bag/tablecloth to the ceiling.

Stuff the balloons in, then tape up the last side when you’ve finished. The last step is to cut a 4 ft piece of yarn and tie it to one of the corners.

When the time was right, we counted down and let the kids pull the string to unleash the balloons!

Which, of course, was followed by extensive balloon playing.

When the kids were finished, we popped open our bottle of sparkling cider (or sparkle juice, as my daughter calls it), and poured it into some plastic flutes. We went around the table and said one good thing we wanted in the new year, clinked our glasses, and enjoyed our sparkle juice!

That’s my low-key way of welcoming in the new year with the littles. If you want more ideas, here are a few others who also throw Noon Year’s Eve parties. They have some great thoughts!