Baby Shower Activities and Games

The shape of the party

The opening half hour belongs to arrivals and conversation. Guests want to greet each other and to talk to the guest of honour, and nothing should be scheduled over the top of it.

Food follows, or runs throughout. Finger food is easiest, since guests can eat as they like without the afternoon stopping. The cake usually waits until nearer the end.

Games sit in the middle, once everyone has arrived and eaten. Gifts come last, because the shower tends to wind down naturally once they are opened.

A written running order is worth having, even a rough one. It need not be shown to anyone, but it prevents the common failure where two hours pass in conversation and the gifts are opened in a rush as guests are putting their coats on.

Choosing games

Games do a specific job: they get people talking who do not know each other. A shower where the guests are colleagues, two sides of a family, or friends from different periods of someone's life benefits from one or two. A shower where everyone already knows everyone often needs none at all.

Where a mixed guest list includes partners and men, showers usually run with fewer structured games and more time simply eating and talking. That is worth planning for rather than treating as a failure.

Games are decided about three weeks ahead, because most need materials: printed sheets, pens, prizes, whatever the game itself requires. Two or three is plenty. A long sequence of them turns a party into a school sports day.

Familiar options include guessing how many sweets a baby bottle holds, baby bingo, baby noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe), pinning the dummy on the baby, and any number of quizzes and word games adapted to the theme. Almost any parlour game can be reworked.

Games worth thinking twice about

Measuring or guessing the circumference of the guest of honour's bump is traditional and still common, and a good many people dislike it — it turns her body into the entertainment in front of a room of guests. Some find it funny; others endure it politely. The only way to know is to ask her beforehand, and if the shower is a surprise, to ask someone who knows her well.

The same caution applies to anything that puts a guest on the spot about their own circumstances. Guessing games about who will have a baby next, however lightly meant, can land badly on someone who has been trying.

When games are not the answer

A shared project works well for a group that would rather not play anything, and produces something the parents keep.

An advice book is the simplest version: a blank notebook passed around, each guest writing a page of parenting advice and signing it. Others include a quilt, a decorated wall hanging, or decorating plain baby clothes.

Recorded video messages have largely taken over from the written advice book, and many showers now do both. That needs a quiet corner and someone to invite guests over one at a time, and is covered in Baby shower photography and video.

Where guests are joining by video call, they can take part in quizzes and guessing games as easily as anyone in the room, provided somebody is given the job of including them.

Opening the gifts

This is the part of the afternoon most people came for, and it needs one piece of organisation: somebody writing down each gift and who gave it, as the parcels are opened. That list cannot be reconstructed afterwards, and without it the thank-you notes become guesswork.

The ribbons and bows are traditionally saved and assembled into a hat or a bouquet for the guest of honour to wear. It is silly and most people enjoy it, but it is a tradition to offer rather than impose.

Prizes

Each game needs a prize, and prizes are not favours — favours go to everyone, prizes go to the winner. Something small does the job: a candle, chocolates, a bottle of something. Buying two or three more than the number of games covers ties and the game that turns out to need one.