(Thanks for a great article by guest blogger Erin McNeill from 4Nannies.com)

New Year’s Eve is an exciting time for everyone; why not take the time to plan an extraordinary event for the kids in your life? Everyone in the family can be involved in the activities to help create a healthy and safe New Year for all of your family members.

Create your own time capsule – Throughout the year gather clippings and other artifacts from important events that happened and put them all in a time capsule. Add in souvenirs and a few pictures from places you visited also. Store it in a safe place and decide together when you’ll open it again. It would be fun to open it each year and go through the contents and then add mementos from the previous year. (The cool example above from kellicrowe can be found here)

Make party hats – Create your own party hats for your celebration! Decorate them before you assemble them; you can use pom-poms, glitter, sequins, glitter glue, ribbon, and anything else you fancy. (Above image and lots more to choose from at handmadecharlotte.com)

Decorate cookies – Bake a bunch of sugar cookies ahead of time and have frosting ready to go for some serious cookie decorating. Make sure you have a lot of fancy decorations on hand like sprinkles and sanding sugars. These New Years Confetti Clock Cookies from Repeat Crafter Me are such a cool idea!

Make fancy kid drinks – Have some sparkling juices and ingredients for Shirley Temple’s on hand so that the kids can feel fancy at their New Year’s Eve party. Having some fresh fruit to drop into the glasses before serving will ensure that the kids feel like the grown-ups. Lots of recipes at Parenting.com

Play traditional party games with a New Year’s theme – Keep kids involved in the celebration (without them getting too wild and out of control!) by planning some party games. Pin the party hat on the person, musical chairs with holiday themed music, and a sequined ball piñata are just some of the activities to choose from. We really like this Rolling Around The Clock game from The Idea Room.

Make your own sequined balls – Create your own ball just like the one they drop at midnight! All you need is a two-inch foam ball, some straight pins or craft glue, colorful sequins, and a chenille stem. Older kids can use straight pins to pin the sequins into the balls while younger kids can glue the sequins on (be sure to allow drying time). Push a chenille stem part way through the top and use the other end as a hanger. Hang up all of the balls and admire the festive atmosphere you’ve created. (Image and tutorial above found here)

Learn how to say Happy New Year in many languages – Make cards that show how to say Happy New Year in different languages and practice them on each other. Be sure to include a phonetic pronunciation of each language to help your guests read the cards. If you want to be really tricky you can make your guests guess which language each card is from!

Make resolutions – Help kids create resolutions for the coming year, but instead of focusing on what they’d like to change about themselves, encourage them to focus on doing goods deeds for others in the coming year. Have them list a few of the potential things they could do for each other during the coming year. (Image found at theprettyblog)

Countdown to “midnight” together – Some kids just aren’t ready to stay up until midnight, so create their own midnight for them by setting your clocks back a few hours. Kids will feel like they’ve stayed up really late celebrating the New Year with you while still getting the sleep they need.

New Year’s Eve is a great time to invite over other people to join you, think about including friends for everyone in the family to ensure a successful celebration by all! After the kids have their own celebration you can tuck them all in for a New Year’s Eve sleepover while the adults continue to count down to the New Year together.