New Year’s Eve Family Fun: “Ball Drop” Craft

A big part of the New Year’s Eve tradition every year is watching the ball drop in Times Square.  If you’re looking for a fun activity for the kids leading up to New Year’s Eve (we all know that Christmas vacation can get very long), why not have them create a fun New Year’s Eve ball for your celebration?  This would also be a fun party activity for older elementary age kids if you were hosting a New Year’s Eve party.

To make your New Year’s Eve Ball, you’ll need a styrofoam ball, sequins, and straight pins.   We got a large ball at Michaels craft store, but you could do one a little bit smaller and it would take less time (ours probably took 1-2 hours with two kids and myself working on it).  To create the year ‘2011’ we used scrapbooking stickers that we also just pinned on the ball.   Next year, we’ll just swap the numbers out for 2012.

To hang the ball, we used craft ribbon we had in our craft stash.  It didn’t work to simply pin in the ribbon, because the weight of the ball caused the pin to fall out.  We solved that problem by adding a little hot glue to the top to secure it to the ball.   While we won’t actually “drop” our ball, it is a fun decoration to enjoy on New Year’s Eve.  Plus, we’re looking forward to bringing it out year after year as part of our family tradition.

Happy New Year’s Eve 2011, Everyone!