MAKING IT STICK
You will need: balloons; cups; shaving foam; cheese puff snacks (or packing pellets); cover-up and clean-up equipment
Blow up the balloons and cover them with shaving foam. Stand each one in a cup and position the group about two metres away, each person opposite a balloon. (If you have a large group, play this in teams.) Give each player a bag of cheese puff snacks (or packing pellets). At the signal to start, everyone has to throw the snacks at their balloon so that they stick to the shaving foam. The player with the best-covered balloon is the winner.
Chat about how easy or difficult it is to make New Year’s resolutions stick. Ask if anyone has made any resolutions this year, and how they are getting on with them.
LYRIC MATCHING
You will need: song lyrics written out on strips of paper (see below)
Before the session, find the bestselling songs of 2018. Write out the first lines of some of these songs on two strips of paper, with the first half of the line on one strip and the second on the other. Mix all the half-lines up.
Give the group the strips of paper and challenge them to sort all the song lyrics into the correct pairs. (If you have a large group, put everyone into teams and give each team a set of song lyrics. The first team to complete all the lyrics is the winner.) Once everyone has finished, chat about people’s favourite songs from the past year.
FIRST FOOTING RELAY
You will need: balloons; access to front and back doors; a safe outdoor pathway between the doors
Split the group into teams and line them up between the front and back doors of your venue. If they are quite a long way apart, the teams will need to spread out to cover the distance. Give the player closest to the front door a balloon.
On the signal to start, the first player should put the balloon between their knees and waddle to the next person on their team. They should pass the balloon to that person knee-to-knee. This player then waddles to the next player, passes the balloon along and so on. When the final player gets the balloon they have to waddle out of the back door, around the building and in through the front door, still with the balloon between their knees. The process then starts again. The first team to get back to its original order is the winner.
STARTERS
You will need: a variety of ingredients (see below); kitchen utensils; plates; cover-up and clean-up equipment
Before the session, gather together a range of ingredients that can be used to make canapés, hors d’oeuvres or small starters (depending on how posh you are!). These might be salad vegetables, cheese, bread and crackers, cooked meats or pickles. Divide these ingredients into sets of four or five. Make sure you have different ingredients in each set.
Split your group into smaller teams and give each one a set of ingredients. Challenge each team to create a canapé for a New Year party with what they have been given. Say that they are allowed to use ingredients from other groups, but only if they bargain for them. Encourage the teams to think about presentation as well as taste.
Once everyone is finished, do a taste test to see which is the best starter.
RESOLUTION CONSEQUENCES
You will need: paper and pens
Give each person a sheet of paper and a pen. Say that you’re going to ask them to come up with phrases to make up a New Year’s resolution. After each phrase they should fold the top of the paper over and pass it to the person on their left, as if they were playing consequences. Read out these instructions one by one:
Think of something you’d like to start doing and complete the sentence: “This year, I’m going to…”
Think of a famous person to do this with: “And I’m going to do this with…”
Think of a timescale: “I’m going to do this by…”
Think of some equipment: “To do this I’ll need…”
Think of a consequence if this doesn’t happen: “If I don’t do this, then…”
Think of a benefit if it does happen: “But if I do, then…”
Make sure the group knows they should be appropriate in everything they write! Once everyone has finished, unfold the papers and read them out.
