Parenting & New Baby Advice Blog

Posts Tagged ‘baby shower games’

If you have never hosted a baby shower before you may not realize just how much it costs. You have the expenses of baby shower favors, invitations, food, plates, forks, cups, drinks, and games and prizes and possibly even more. However, there is a way that you can throw a wonderful baby shower on a shoestring budget. It just takes a little planning and some creativity.

Invitations

You can go out and buy the invitations or you can get creative and make them yourself. It’s not always easy to come up with the right material but you can make invitations with construction paper or stock paper. If you know calligraphy, you can create a formal invitation that is unique and beautiful. If you are going to use a theme for your baby shower then purchase stamps that display the theme so you can stamp each invitation. Save on stamps by passing out as many invitations as possible. A personal invitation means more when it is hand delivered.

Decorations

Over time, it’s easy to accumulate streamers from various occasions but streamers are not that expensive to buy per roll. You can decorate with streamers in a variety of different ways. Streamers can be tied, twisted, placed in a special design, and can come in many different colors. Search online for templates that can be printed out and applied to cardboard to hang up at the party. Place some string through the top and hang decorations from the ceilings. Use the streamers to highlight or accent.

Purchase some small pieces of material from your local sewing shop and cut them in half. Fold them up to resemble a cloth diaper and use a small safety pin to pin the diaper together. These homemade cloth diapers can be made with any color or theme, depending on what you want the decor to look like. You can place name cards in the diapers, a number used to draw on the doorprize for the evening, or a baby shower souvenir. Flower seeds are a great souvenir to place inside the cloth diapers with a little note telling everyone to plant their flower seeds on the day that the baby is born. You may want to place the flower seeds in saran wrap or zip lock bags so the seeds will stay fresh until they are planted. You also want to make sure that the flowers fit the season. You can also use the cloth diapers to place mints or nuts in.

Games and prizes

There are several baby shower games you can play with guests that cost little to no money. Draw a baby face, measure mommy, and guess who the baby is. To draw a baby face, you need a paper plate and crayon. For the measure mommy game, you need cheap toilet paper or yarn. To guess the baby, you simply need all the guests to bring a baby picture of themselves and have the guests match the baby picture to the right person. You will still need a prize for the winner who got the most right.

Prizes should be simple like candles, bath and body kits, or a disposable camera. It’s best to keep the prizes simple so you can use most of the money on everything else. After all, it’s about the mommy-to-be and not so much about what prizes there are to take home.

Are you in charge of planning a baby shower in the near future?  Do you want a creative way to pull it all together?  If so, then consider one of these two themes for a day of fun and laughs.

Babify it!  Theme
Ok, so it is not a real word, but nevertheless, this theme can produce a truly wonderful baby shower.  Rather than simply choosing a few pastel colors for plates and streamers, consider ways to take the term baby and make it apply to everything.  Serve baby back ribs with a salad of baby carrots, baby corn, baby spinach, and baby scallions.  For dessert, consider bite-sized baby cheesecakes, or even go so far as to pick up a few of the nostalgic candies with baby themes- baby bottle pops and pacifier shaped candies.  You can even go one step further and serve drinks out of baby bottle bottoms.  Remove the nipple, pour and serve.  The best option for bottles in this case would be those with a large base, such as Avent bottles.  At the end of the day, wash them, sterilize them, and give them to the mother-to-be. Throughout the shower, play traditional baby shower games such as “name that baby food” and “diapering relay.”

Tea Party Baby Shower Theme

Tea Themed Baby Shower Table Setting from Pixelpackinmama at Flickr

If you would rather opt against the over-the-top baby theme, then perhaps a tea party would be more suitable.  This party idea is especially successful for the mother-to-be that is expecting a little girl because mini tea sets, intended for play, can be used in the festivities.  Line up a number of the small plastic tea cups, and fill each of the small pots with a different flavor of tea.  Much like a wine tasting, allow the women in attendance to try a few sips of each flavor.  There are a number of excellent online gourmet tea sites that will provide loose teas in a large variety of flavors, or if you are looking for a quick solution, go to the local grocery store and peruse the tea aisle.  For a sit-down style tea party, the teapot place card holders shown to the right make excellent favors too.

You might also serve small desserts that would typically accompany a tea party and play games that would be featured at a child’s tea party. These might include musical chairs and a dress-up race.  For the race, place maternity clothes, shoes and socks in a large pile at the end of a long space; have women form two teams and lineup in their teams at the opposite end of the room as the pile.  One by one, women should race down, choose a full outfit from the pile, put it on and race back.  Have the next woman in line take the clothes that the other woman is dressed in, wear them, run to the pile and change into a new outfit.  This process continues until one team goes through their entire line. The winning team might be presented with a small tea gift basket.  At the end of the party, wash the tea sets thoroughly, and give them to the mother-to-be for more tea parties in the future.

There are lots of baby shower themes out there! Here are some more great ideas:

• Monkey Baby Shower Ideas
• Free Bridal Shower Game Ideas
• Jungle Themed Baby Shower
• Sports Themed Baby Shower
• Noah's Ark Baby Shower
• Farm Animal or Barnyard Baby Shower
• Ladybug Themed Baby Shower
• Under The Sea Baby Shower
• Butterfly Themed Baby Shower

If you're planning a baby shower on a budget, not only do we offer a wide selection of reasonably-priced shower favors, we also give you free baby shower games! Simply print one or two of your favorite games and enjoy!  The free games we offer are:

1. Name The Nursery Rhyme - We list 20 short phrases included in popular nursery rhymes.  You may think it's easy to fill in the rest of the rhyme along with the title, but we've found a few that are pretty challenging.  Don't worry, we also provide an answer key!
2. Baby Shower Word Jumble - 20 words associated with pregnancy and babies have been jumbled and it's up to your guests to decipher them.  To make this game even tougher, put a time limit on it.  The person who comes up with the most correct answers in 5 minutes takes home the prize.  Again, we provide the answer key in case there are a couple tough jumbles.
3. Who Knows Mommy Best - See who knows the mother-to-be best by having guests answer questions like "What is mommy's favorite color?" or "What is mommy's shoe size?"  While guests work on their answers, have the mother-to-be fill in the correct answers.  You may be surprised at how much - or how little - guests know in a short time period!
4. Baby Shower Categories Game - Similar to Scattergories, this popular game can be played individually or as a team.  Guests must come up with words that start with a specific letter and that fit into a specific baby-related category such as Baby Boy Names, Baby Products, Baby Food Flavors or Items Found in a Diaper Bag.
5. Baby Shower Guest Discovery - A great ice-breaker, this game should be handed out to guests when they arrive.  As they mingle, they will try to find someone who shares their shoe size, who has gone on a blind date, etc.  The one who fills in the most answers wins!
6. Baby Shower Purse Game - One of my personal favorites, this game rewards the guest with the most "junk" in her purse!  The sheet is basically a checklist of items - mundane to eccentric.  Guests receive points based on how many items are in her purse.  One point items include keys, a pen and a credit card.  Guests can earn 20 points if they are carrying a spoon, socks, earrings or a jar of baby food.
7. Baby Animals Game - We've listed 25 adult animal names and your guests will have to fill in the baby name.  The animals start out easy (Cow/Calf), get a little more difficult (Goose/Gosling) and end up extremely challenging (Penguin/Fledgling).  The guest to score 25 out of 25 deserves a truly special prize!
8. Baby Shower Bingo - The last free game we offer is also our most popular.  The game set includes 25 different bingo cards along with 75 bingo names.  Simply cut the names apart and place them in a hat.  Draw out names one at a time, then wait for someone to shout "BABY BINGO".  If you want to play more than one game, provide candies or diaper pins to cover the names as they are called.

Want more? Find more baby shower games!

I may be corny, but my favorite part of a baby shower is game time!  Maybe it's my competitive nature, or my love of winning prizes, but in any case I'm always first in line for game time.  Over the years I've played some fun baby shower games and even been inspired to create a few.  The ones listed below work perfectly for a flower-themed shower:

Flower Word Scramble - Scramble up the letters to popular flower names and have guests arrange them in the proper order.  The first one done (or the one with the most correct answers) wins a prize.  Excellent flower names for this game are gladiolus, daffodil and delphinium, but you'll also want to include a few easier names like rose, daisy and tulip.

Guess That Flower - Visit a flower store or farmer's market prior to the shower and gather a number of blooms.  Make sure you know the name of each flower, and put each flower in a different vase (baby bottles work well for vases in this case).  Number each flower and have guests write down the name - the person with the most correct answers wins.  A great prize for this game is to gather all of the flowers into a beautiful arrangement and present it to the winner.

How Many Petals - As mentioned in my previous post, ask your shower guests to estimate how many petals are contained in a certain bloom (daisies are perfect for this game).  Let mom pull the flower apart and the person with the closest estimate wins!  Present her with a floral-scented candle, bubble bath or hand lotion.

Flower Colors - Announce certain flower names and have each guest (including the mother-to-be) write down the first color that comes to mind (like red roses, white baby's breath, yellow daisy, purple iris, etc).  See which guest has the highest number of matches to the new mom and reward that person with a suitable prize.

X Marks The Spot - Purchase personalized blooming lemonade packets and mark one of these packets with an X on the back.  Place the packets in a basket and make sure your guests select one (or two) as a take-home favor.  Before the shower ends, ask your guests to check the back of their packets, the person who holds the marked packet wins a prize!

Related Articles:

• Five Cheap Baby Shower Games
• Baby Shower Theme Ideas

If you are tired of the same baby shower games that you've played a hundred times, try a few of these games that focus on your barnyard baby shower theme:

Baby Animal Name Game

Prior to the shower, look up the proper names of farm animals and their offspring.  Create a list of each, and have your guests match the mother to the baby.  For example, a mother horse is called a mare and the baby horse is a foal.  More mothers and babies are listed below:

(Cattle)                      Cow                   Calf

(Goose)                     Goose               Gosling

(Duck)                       Duck                  Duckling

(Chicken)                 Hen                    Chick

(Goat)                        Doe                    Kid

(Pig)                           Sow                    Piglet

(Sheep)                     Ewe                    Lamb

(Cat)                          Queen                Kitten

Old MacDonald Memory Game

Another fun shower game tests your guests' memories!  With everyone gathered in a circle, start to the right of the mother-to-be.  Have this guest say the phrase "(Mother-to-be) has a farm and on her farm she has a (list animal)"  For example, if Mary were the mother to be, your guest should say, "Mother Mary has a farm and on her farm she has a goat."  The next guest repeats the phrase and adds another animal.  This continues around the circle and gets increasingly difficult as each guest has to remember the list of animals and come up with a new animal to add!  You may want to write down the list of animals to make sure the guests are getting them right!  The game can continue until either someone gets the list wrong, or until there is 1 guest left who can recite the entire list of animals.

Barnyard Babies Hunt

Get your guests out of their seats with a farm animal hunt - similar to an Easter egg hunt.  Purchase a set of farm animal babies like the ones pictured above (photo courtesy of growingtreetoys.com).  Hide the animals around your shower venue and offer prizes for recovering each toy.

Find more Farm Animal or Barnyard Baby Shower ideas here!