Baby shower traditional games

Before the shower, create bingo cards by drawing grids on a piece of paper, then make enough copies for all the guests. On each piece of paper, place numbers randomly in the squares. If you have 16 guests, you'll want to create a four-by-four grid with numbers one through As the guest of honor opens each present, call out the number of that present, and have guests mark their bingo cards if they have that number in one of the squares.

Alternatively, you can buy preprinted bingo cards, or find free ones online that provide an alternative way to play.

You won't have to number the presents, as these cards have pictures of baby items likely to be in the gift pile, such as a teddy bear, books or bibs.

Prizes for all the games can be gift cards to local stores, boxes of chocolates, or toiletries such as lotions or soaps. So, you're at a baby shower, cooing over baby items and discussing the baby on the way.

How hard is it to avoid saying the word "baby"? Very hard -- even more difficult than you might think! So, make it a game. This is often played by giving a clothespin to each guest.

Guests clip the clothespins to their sleeves or the hems of their shirts, or on strings of ribbon or yarn around their necks. Each time someone blunders and says "baby," the person who catches the slip-up gets to take the offender's clothespin and keep it. Mom's tummy is probably pretty big around the time of the shower. But how big is it exactly? You can make a game of guessing the answer to that very question.

During the shower, pass around spools of ribbon, or balls of string or yarn, plus scissors. Each guest will try to estimate how big around the mother-to-be's belly is. To show off their guesses, each guest will clip off a piece of ribbon, string or yarn that she thinks is the closest size to that of the pregnant woman's middle.

Then place each guest's string around the mom's stomach and see who had the closest guess -- that person is the lucky winner!

You can test party-goers' thinking speed and acuity with a scramble game using the names of baby-related items. To set up scramble words, before the shower, make a list of 15 or 20 different terms, such as blanket, pacifier, bassinet, diaper and stroller.

Then scramble the letters of each word, for example, writing tlarte for rattle. At the shower, either give each guest a piece of paper with the scrambled words on it or post the words on a wall or chalkboard where everyone can view them. To play Team Diaper Duty, pair up the guests into teams of two. The teams will take turns trying to remove the clothes from a doll, take off the diaper, and put the new diaper on as neatly and accurately as needed for a real baby, and then put the clothes back on.

Best of all, each team member can only use one hand! With two people trying to coordinate using only one hand each, this event will create lots of laughs from both those clumsily diapering the doll and from those watching. The baby picture game is an excellent icebreaker for showers where all the guests might not know each other.

Then the doll is handed to the next team member for changing, and the diaper changer goes to the back of the line. When everyone on a team has changed the doll's diaper once, that team has won.

Have each participant blow up at least one balloon and place it under her shirt to make the "baby. You can give prizes for the most twisted pose, most balloons carried under the shirt, and the least number of popped or dropped balloons.

Let the mom-to-be sit in a chair and be the judge while enjoying the fun. Make two or three little clotheslines — you can either prop them up on sticks or have one or two members of each team hold the ends of the string. Split your guests into competing teams, set a timer, and have them hang up as many diapers as possible. The team with the most diapers on the line wins. Cut down on the baby shower prep by downloading and printing our games here , but read on for more inspiration.

Before the party, print out our baby bingo sheet and give one to each guest. Hand each guest a card, which should be unique for everyone with a different combination of gifts. Then, as the mom-to-be opens her gifts, guests can mark off any items received with a sticker or cross it out with a pen.

The first guest to complete a row, column, or diagonal wins! Pictures of baby items cut from a catalogue or printed out — they can even be from the mom-to-be's registry wish list. Lay out the pictures of the baby-related items, and give your guests a pen and paper. You can pick up each item and give a description and have your guests write down a price as a guess. The guest to get the closest price without going over gets a gift.

Give copies of the questions to the mom-to-be and her partner before the party, and ask them to write down their answers. During the shower, give copies of the questions to all the guests, and have them use their imagination to fill in the blanks with what they think mom or dad said in answer to each question. The guest who guesses the answers closest to what mom or dad said wins the game. Let them know they can make their answers as funny or as sentimental as they'd like.

Once finished, have people read out their answers to the first question, and vote for the best answer. The winner gets a point, and then you can move on to the next item on the list. The person with the highest score wins a prize. This baby shower standby is always a hit. Before beginning the game, ask the mom-to-be to reveal her anticipated due date. Remind everyone that only 5 percent of babies are born exactly on their due date! Then, ask each guest to predict the day and the time the baby will be born, and write their prediction on the paper or calendar.

You can promise to give a prize to each person who picks the correct day and also to the person who most closely picks the time. Don't forget to send those prizes out after the baby is born. Before your guests arrive, write or print the names of some famous mothers onto name tags for each guest. You could choose a category like mothers in fiction, mothers from current or classic TV shows or movies, or anything you wish.

When your guests arrive, attach a name tag to the back of each guest, without letting the guest see the name. Before the party, put a baby item into each bag, and number the bags. At the party, hand out the sheets of paper and pens to the guests, then start passing the bags out one by one. The guest must take a guess what they think is in each bag without opening it, and write it down; however, shaking and feeling the bag is allowed.

After the guesses have been scribbled on the paper, ask the mom-to-be to do the great reveal; the guest with the most correct guesses is the winner.

Arrange the pictures of the mom-to-be on a board or a table, and place a number next to each picture. Ask the guests to write the numbers in the order of age, and see who gets the most correct. Ask each guest to decorate an outfit for the new baby. If you like, have the mom-to-be relax in another room during the decorating time.

When everyone is finished, spread the finished products out on a table and ask the mom-to-be to guess which guest decorated each one.

A baby blanket makes a great keepsake, so why not get friends and family involved in making one? Give each guest a square of fabric to decorate for the new baby. You can decorate the squares at the party, or send guests their square in advance, and ask them to bring their decorated square to the shower.

If you decide to do the decorating beforehand, then at the party, you can ask the group to arrange the squares you'll need to have some extra squares, perhaps in a patterned fabric or contrasting plain color and make a quilt pattern. After the party, you can assemble the quilt yourself you'll need extra fabric, of course, for the quilt backing, and also batting — the "stuffing" for the quilt or send it to an expert quilter to put together.

Remember this memento is intended for decoration only, and shouldn't be placed in the crib. Give each guest a diaper and a marker pen, and have her write a funny quote, joke, words of encouragement, or anything creative on the back of the diaper. Then, give the box of personalized diapers to the parents-to-be for inspiration during a late-night diaper change! Put the supplies out on the table, and have some old newspaper handy to put under the paintings to make cleaning up easier.

Encourage imaginations to run wild — they can produce drawings, inspirational quotes, or anything that they think would be great for the nursery. Choose between 10 and 20 common words associated with babies — stroller, cradle, spit-up, etc.

The goal of the game is to see who knows the mother-to-be best. Be sure to have the parents of the expectant couple involved in this came to create a little more fun. The answers will be tallied and the one that had the most right wins. This game is similar to the Tray Game but with a twist. With this, guests would sit in circle with a diaper bag in the middle. This goes on around the circle but once a guest forgets one of the items added, they are disqualified from the game. You may end up with a couple of winners but the game is fun.

Make a list of words that relate to pregnancy and babies and post them on a piece of poster board for all the guests to see. Then, hand each guest a piece of paper and pencil, set a timer for three minutes, and have them try to make as many new words out of each word presented as possible within the time frame.

On one side of a piece of paper, write the alphabet in big, bold letters. Then, next to each letter, draw two lines. For this game, the guests would write down the name of two animals for every letter that corresponds with that letter. Now, set your timer for about three minutes and have everyone write as quickly as possible.

The person that completes the task ahead of others is the winner. Of all baby shower games, this is one of the funniest. In this case, you will need about eight to ten different jars of baby food with the labels removed and replaced with a number so you can keep track.

Now, on paper plates draw eight to ten circles with the corresponding number on top of each. Place a small dollop of the food into each circle and have the guests taste the food. Their goal is to identify the flavor of food but they must be exact. The person that identifies the most wins. With this game, you would want to know about any guests who are vegetarians or have some type of food allergy. With this, a bowl is filled about three-quarters with dry rice. Next, add in about 10 to 20 safety pins.

For the guests wanting to play, they would be blindfolded to see how many safety pins could be removed in one minute. The guest who finds the most pins is the winner of the game.

Does this sound too easy? Keep in mind that pins and rice feel the same, especially when blindfolded. On a piece of poster board, write down the following grown animal names plus any others you would like to add.

Then, set the timer for two minutes and have each guest write down the name for the baby associated with each animal. The person with the most correct answers wins.

With this, write the name of the baby out on pieces of paper on the left side and blank space for guests to write. Then, set the timer for two minutes and have them make sentences out of each letter. Prior to the baby shower, freeze ice cubes with miniature plastic babies in each one. When it comes time for refreshments, use the special cubes. The guest whose ice cubes melt completely first wins. Remind guests that they cannot cheat by handling the ice cube, adding warm water to their drink, sucking on the ice cube, etc.

To make this work best, freeze the actual plastic dolls prior to dropping them into the ice cube trays. When the expectant mother or couple gets ready to open gifts, have a timer nearby that is set every five minutes. The guest whose gift is being opened when the bell goes off wins some type of small prize. If the baby shower is small, you can set the timer to two or three minutes. Request that each guest bring one of his or her own baby photos.

Then, attach all of the photos to several pieces of poster board, setting them around the room. Above each photo, place a number. Instruct all of the guests to look at the photos throughout the shower and try to figure out which guest matches up to which photo. The guests can keep track with a paper and pen and then the guest that has the most photos identified correctly would win. For this game, you will make a list of about 20 famous people on a poster board, placing it where all the guests can see.

Then, make sure every guest has a piece of paper and a pen.