On the last day of school before Christmas break, our class had a party to celebrate the end of school in 2010. Since I teach in Las Vegas, it was only natural to have a kid-friendly version of the party that many parents and other grown-ups would experience on New Year's Eve. This New Year's party included Las Vegas-style New Year's fun and games, New Year's crafts, and New Year's resolutions for kids.

In terms of Las Vegas games for kids, cards is the ultimate! Several card games were played, with a child serving as the dealer at each game. We used card decks and dice from real casinos, but of course there was no gambling. Bingo was played, too. Aside from being fun, card games are excellent for teaching and reinforcing math skills.TLC has directions for Math War and other card games for kids.

We turned the classroom into a dance club for another fun Las Vegas New Year's activity. Students took turns being the DJ, while the others danced.

Then the kids had fun catching bead necklaces. These were the real thing from the Rio Hotel.

New Year's crafts for kids included party hats, noisemakers, glitter fireworks on long sheets of black paper that we wrapped around the room, and pictures, shown below, that we wrote our New Year's resolutions on. We each thought of a personal goal for school in 2011.

You can find more ideas for New Year's crafts for kids at Artists Helping Children and Disney's Family Fun.

Students enjoyed sparkling cider in plastic champagne flutes, and right before dismissal we had the New Year's countdown. At the stroke of 3:00, I had a paper ball drop from the ceiling, and the students played their noisemakers, popped balloons with confetti in them, and gave each other hugs.

 

We all had a lot of fun, and it was a great way to end the year at school!

~Allie

Read an article from last year, "Kids Can Make Resolutions, Too,"  to get ideas for New Year's resolutions for kids of all ages.