The first aspect of the baby shower planning that I am focusing on, aside from getting sponsors, are games. Apparently you have to have them. Well, I don’t know about HAVE to have them, but it seems like it’s a tradition and I would be failing as a baby shower planner if I didn’t.
Remember, I was absolutely tricked into volunteering for this. That happens to me a lot. You think I have 2 kids on purpose?
Anyhow, I was saved by Kris from Nunc Scio quit sit amor. Do you want to know what her blog name means? Too bad, I won’t tell you. To find out go visit her blog and make sure you subscribe. She deserves at least that much for all the help she has given me.
Here is the list of game ideas she has given me. If you have any more, let me know. If but some freak chance you want to donate prizes for the games, let me know that too!
Baby Shower Bingo
In this game you give everyone a blank bingo sheet that is empty except for the middle square which is the usual free square. Before the gifts are opened, you have everyone fill in the empty squares with items that they think will be received at the shower. As the gifts are being opened, everyone plays bingo!
Kris even sent me a template in Microsoft Publisher. Yay! And it is adorable! Here’s a screenshot:
Clothespin Game
At the start of the shower, you give everyone a clothespin. If someone says baby, the first person to hear them and ask for their clothespin gets to keep it. At the end of the shower, the person with the most clothespins wins.
Candy
You read off a list of clues that are baby related and on the backs of their bingo cards, people try and guess the answers, each of which is actually the name of a candy or candy bar. For instance, if the clue was “hospital address” the answer would be “5th Avenue”.
Kris, thank you so much for these! If anyone has any more, please let me know. In the meantime, shoo….get out of here. Go visit Nunc Scio quit sit amor and subscribe to Kris’s emails!
About Kim
What about the “unwrap the gift” game? Befor the shower, wrap a party favor plenty of times, I would suggest at least 10 times. Pass the gift around the room, and the guests will remove a layer of wrapping paper each time they are in possession of the gift. Whoever removes the last layer gets to keep that gift.
Here is one I did at my sisters shower. I have played this at many other showers but this time I decided to add a little suprise at the end.
Buy small baby items (pacifiers, thermometers, nail clippers, etc. (which the person who the shower is for then gets to keep)) and place them all on a tray (about 15-20 items). Give everyone a piece of paper and a pen and tell them they will have 3 minutes to study everything on the tray (show it around as you are explaining this). The person who remembers the most items and writes them down in 1 minute wins.
Here’s the twist: Hand the tray to the person the shower is for and ask her to take it to another room and let her know ahead of time quietly that she needs to stay out of the room you are in. When she leaves the room tell everyone they will have one minute to name anything that person was wearing (they will have concentrated so hard on memorizing all the tray objects that this will throw them for a loop) I had some very flabbergasted people at my sisters shower :-)
I hope I explained that good.
We always had a hoot playing “Who can change the baby the fastest” but with a twist.
2 people sat side by side with their inside arms behind their backs. So basically, one could use her right and the other could use her left arm. Together, they had to put a diaper on the baby and put clothes on it. The first one to dress a baby “appropriately” wins! It always had us laughing.
Another is measuring the belly using yarn or string. Hold out the yarn and let them pull out what they think will go around her belly (the closes) and who ever IS the closes wins.
OR, you could do a word game scramble game. Pick a word like the mother’s name, name of baby, etc. and who ever can come up with the most words out of that word wins.
Ummm, let’s see…..you could also do a “survey”. make a list of questions about the mom and dad (if there is one), have everyone answer them. Who ever gets the most correct wins. We had questions like:
Did hubby gain more than 10lbs during wife’s pregnancy?
What do you think the mom weighs?..LOL
etc……
Whew…that’s all I can think of for now;)