An acquaintance and I are hosting a baby shower for a mutual friend next Sunday. We have everything planned except for… the games. We feel like there ought to be one or two, but neither of us know of any that are any fun. I gigured before we scrap the idea entirely, I’d ask around.
Any of you know of a good baby shower game? Help us entertain!
Thanks!
Here are two that are fun (as far as baby shower games go)…
In the first, you take a bowl or flat plate with rounded edges and fill it with uncooked rice. You mix in some small safety pins. Blindfold the player, put her hands in the bowl, and give her 30 seconds (or a minute, depending on how many people and how much time you want to dedicate to the game) to pull out as many pins as she can. It isn’t as easy as you’d think, and is fun watching her pass over the pins. Winner picks the most pins out.
The second one lists the names of baby animals (calf, kitten, chick, kit) and within a time frame (say, three minutes) you have to name the adult version of the animal. There are some obsure baby names that people will have trouble with. You should be able to find this game in a shower book at the library.
Actually I just remembered a third from my shower. Have a ball of yarn or string. Give it to the guests with a pair of scissors. The guest cuts off a length to fit closest around the preggers belly. This one is pretty funny because most people have no clue what length to do.
Well we had a pretty good time at my SO’s sister-in-laws’ shower with one of the games - the toilet paper bride. They picked teams of two people, gave one the toilet paper, and the other one had to make a bride. Then everyone voted on the prettiest bride.
Also was the bridal bingo. You got a empty bingo sheet, and had to guess what the bride was getting (cutlery, pots). Then as she opened each one, you could cross it off, and if you got Bingo you won a prize. And they had little cute prizes.
Have everyone bring a baby picture of themselves and deposit it into an envelope or box when they arrive (no peeking or showing your picture to anyone else!) Then have everyone guess which picture is whose.
There’s also “Pin the diaper on the doll” – blindfolded.
This was dumb,but surprisingly funny.
Everybody gets a clothespin (or whatever token you want.) If you catch somebody crossing their legs, you win all their clothespins.
One that I always found to be fun was giving each person a small cup with an ice cube in it. Frozen inside the ice cube is a plastic baby (you can get them at craft stores–especially in Christmas sections since they are used as baby Jesuses).
The goal is to be the first person to melt your ice cube to “deliver” the baby without removing the ice cube from the cup.
You can place additional restrictions by saying you can’t touch the ice cube with your hands.
Yay! A lot of these things sound like a hoot!
Thanks for the suggestions. These are great.
I don’t know if you would consider these fun, but these are some of the games we have played at our showers:
We have done the clothespin thing, but instead of crossing your legs, if it is a baby shower, you can take away someone else’s clothes pins if they say the word BABY. Who ever has the most pins at the end of the shower wins.
There is also a game where you put a lump in a diaper of several different kinds of baby food (one type per diaper) and see who can guess the most flavors correctly. (carrots or squash? Peas or green beans? How do you decide? - it is funny to see everyone sniffing the diapers.)
There is also the memory game - you make a basket full of baby items - 15 at least. You show the contents to everyone a piece at a time, then put them out of sight. Then give them 2 minutes to try to remember everything they saw. It is nice because then you can give the basket to the mom as her gift. (rattle, bib, baby nail clippers, nose-sucker thing, teething ring - little stuff like that)
This is one I thought of right away, too. It doesn’t necessarily sound as funny as it actually is. I thought more people would come close to getting the right length, but most of the time I’ve seen this played, the participants are pretty far off the mark.
Another one that turned out to be more fun than I would have thought, is to take the words Baby Shower, and see who can make the most words out of those letters in a given amount of time. Pencil and paper is really all you need. Reading the words back can be fun, and I got quite a few :eek: then giggles when I came up with the word “whores.”
Like the suggestion of not being able to say the word “baby,” sounds difficult but fun.
Baby showers: another reason I’m glad to be a guy.
That being said, I vote for anything that involves eating baby food.
I have been forced to play all of the above mentioned games at a shower, and they all sucked. I have started recently [the past year] to refuse to go to baby showers, though I will make beautiful pastries and send gifts…but I see no reason to play some stupid game that I am not enjoying to honor a friend who is going to sprout progeny. I have been to a baby shower that was a very nice buffet luncheon, with nice music and conversation, and unwrapping the gifts over dessert and coffee in the living room. No stupid games, no cheesy party hats, no raucous noise. Very pleasant, and everybody had fun. <was the mothers wish for a peaceful quiet afternoon, she was on medical instructions to be as quiet as possible, and her sister arranged the whole thing to be like a ladies luncheon/tea.>
For the love of Ghu, why does having a baby mean you have to act like an absolute idiot? I dont find it particularly fun, nor do most of my friends. If I want that, I can watch Growing Up Gotti.
Amen, and most verily, amen again. I loathe showers, of the bridal or baby variety. The cackling women, the stupid games – “Oh, ho, Mildred, you crossed your legs, you loser! Gimme your pins!” – the bad food (chicken salad, argh!) the sickeningly sweet punch made from gingerale, kool-aid and sherbet, it’s all horrific.
Consider this another vote for a dignified, pleasant, quiet, grown-up tea party or ladies’ luncheon. Skip the games in favor of an opportunity for the guests to offer their best piece of advice or their heartfelt well wishes to the mom-to-be. It’s better for all involved.
I think the question of whether or not games at a shower are fun or appropriate depends on the crowd. I’m not a big fan of shower games (hence my query for some that are actually fun), but I think that they can add some structure and intentional goofiness if you’ve got the right people.
In this case, the shower is for a doctor finishing her residency. The guests will all be people she works with at the hospital, most around our age, and all funny, intelligent and willing-to-play people who all work with the mother-to-be but not necessarily with each other. As long as the games don’t involve humiliation of any kind (I’m constantly surprised how many do!) or insult the intelligence of the participants, they really can be a good thing.
The rest of the shower will be excellent appetizers (I can vouch for them, because I am making most of them), non-crappy punch, elegant desserts and the whole gift-opening deal. Heartfelt wishes will of course be a part of it.
Anyway, thanks for the ideas, and the votes against games entirely, too – I know how you feel! I’ll run through everything with my co-hostess tonight and let you guys know what we end up doing. I have a strong feeling that we’ll try the yarn thing. That just cracks me up even thinking about it.
Make the participants race to see who can finish some liquid which they drink from a baby bottle. I attended one co-ed baby shower. The race involved the men, drinking beer of course.
The one I liked best was when they passed out papers containing quotes from nursery rhymes, and you had to identify them. It’s harder than it sounds, if not many people there have young children (it’s best played with people who don’t).
There’s also the “identify the mystery baby food jars” game, but I’ve never liked that one as much.
I made up my own shower games when I hosted my sister’s-in-law shower.
For the first game, I cruised the internet and found 9 baby pictures of famous people (e.g. Elvis, Madonna, Pierce Brosnan, George W. Bush, Princess Di, etc.) and cut and pasted them onto a Word document along with the baby picture of the mother to be.
Guests had to guess who each person was. If they guessed without clues, they got 10 points. If they had to get clues, I’d deduct 2 points for each.
For instance, I had a picture of Madonna. The first clue was, “This famous baby was born in Michigan.”
For the second game, I went a purchased a bunch of baby stuff from Walmart such as diapers, wipes, Similac, baby food and put it in a basket. Guests simply had to guess what the total was. Closest answer won a prize. The basket went to the mom-to-be as my gift to her.
For the final game, I had everyone get their purse. I called out an item that a mom should have in her purse and the first person to produce that item was awarded a point. Person with the most points won.
Items were things like:
I think that’s the thing…if it’s a bunch of people hanging around being goofy together, it’s fun. If there are any serious “but you have to do it this way, or else the baby will just not be born right!” people, it starts being a painful way to spend an afternoon.
One sillyish one that I remember involved having to hang onesies on a clothesline (using clothespins) while holding a babydoll. which is much harder than it sounds when you have a bunch of women, all of whom grew up with electric dryers and many of whom don’t deal with babies (and based on the way we were slinging that doll around, possibly never should.)
A really fun thing I like to do at showers I’ve given (you need a more laid-back crowd, as it can get a little naughty): You secretly assign someone to write down everything the mother says as she opens her presents. After all the gifts are opened, read the comments out loud and explain that everything she said when she opened the gifts were the things she said the night her baby was conceived. Usually there’s a lot of, “Look how cute/small it is!” “That will come in handy.” “Its embroidered!” One mom-to-be even said, “I saw this on television once!” We’ve always had a lot of fun with that one.
Not everybody enjoys this game. The bridal shower version of this game is in fact the #1 reason I chose not to have a bridal shower before I got married. I consider this one, as far as I am concerned, to fit in the category of “humiliation”. Some people may not agree, but you should definitely be sure that the mother-to-be would be OK with it before doing this one.
I had a delightful “baby shower” that my best friend threw for me and my husband. Just lots of friends and family and good food. No games. And most importantly, NO GIFT OPENING! Opening a stack of presents in front of an audience is very uncomfortable for the opener, and it’s intensely boring for the guests. We opened the gifts later, when we could take the time to actually pay attention to what we were doing.