Noon Year's Eve, Biggest Ever Edition

Better late than never... I'm going to try to be a little less verbose here from now on, so that I don't fall so far behind on my blog posts. But with that said, here's a super lengthy one about Noon Year's Eve 2019-2020.

This was my biggest Noon Year's Eve Party ever, with SEVENTY-EIGHT patrons in attendance! That is a huge number for our library! It was so much fun to host such a large-scale program, and it was made even more exciting by my own family joining the party!

Before the program, I set the room up with a few key elements:

1. The balloon drop (After trying a couple, this one, $10-ish on Amazon, is still my favorite).
2. The countdown to noon projected on the wall to build anticipation (made with timeanddate.com).
3. The green screen (I've use a photo backdrop from Oriental Trading all the years before but decided to spice things up a bit this year and use the green screen for the "photobooth" instead).
4. Plastic champagne flutes, sparkling cider, water, and snacks.
5. Craft stuff (The same craft I've done in my Noon Year's Eve Parties since I started them!).
6. Bingo + Bingo prizes
7. Music.

Now I'll discuss everything in more detail.

Crafts:

When the patrons first entered the auditorium, I immediately guided them over to the craft tables. I didn't reinvent the wheel; I used the same two crafts that I used for all of my past Noon Year's Eve Parties-- the time capsule sheets and the crown seen below:

I started the kids off by having them decorate 2020 crowns (which I had pre-cut for them) so they could be festive when the balloons dropped at 12:00. I had also created a two-sided worksheet which I called a time capsule. On one side of the sheet it asked kids to list their favorite things (favorite color, favorite book, favorite movie, etc.) and on the other side it asked them to draw a self-portrait. When they were finished with it, I had them put it in an envelope, which they could also decorate. Then they sealed it up with a sticker (which were just printed on blank labels) that said "Do Not Open Until January 2021." One difference this year: I made a "pre-school sheet" and a "school age sheet" but really, they were pretty similar.

Here are some completed crowns:

Bingo:

This was, by far, the largest Bingo game I have ever conducted. I really had to put my full teacher voice on. I'm also gonna mom-brag a second here and say that it was my first time seeing Sadie play Bingo and, with the help of a much older friend (my coworkers 9-year-old daughter), she did really great!

I actually made brand new Noon Year's Eve Bingo boards this year and bought special prizes just for this game! All from Oriental Trading, we got little blind bags, little stuffed animals, and (seen below), Cute Poop Slow Rising Squishies, which were scented... VERY VERY SCENTED. 😩

Balloon Drop:

Like I said, after trying a couple of different balloon drop bags, this one, $10-ish on Amazon, is still my favorite. It holds about 40-50 balloons, I'd say. Once the countdown (made with timeanddate.com) hit 12:00 noon, I pulled the string and the balloons fell down on the kids, who were gathered below in anticipation. Then I played Auld Lang Syne (specifically the version by Glenn Miller). I'm not sure if the kids noticed, but I think the adults did!

After the balloons dropped I did a little balloon game, having the kids bounce them in different ways. This is to a song called (creatively) The Balloon Game by Music For Little People Choir on the album, "Birthday Party Singalong." Some song lyrics go, "I can bounce it on my finger, yes I can, yes I can," and "I can bounce it on my nose, yes I can, yes I can." Only a handful of kids joined in, but that was ok! Everyone had fun bouncing and tossing their balloons around.

Green Screen Photos:

I've been super into the green screen lately! For the past few months I've been doing a bunch of different kinds of photoshoots with the patrons (The Halloween ones were best of all!). But, because there was so much going on and there was such a large group of people at Noon Year's Eve, I only had one background option (normally I have a bunch) and I wasn't able to get too creative. It was still lots of fun though! Look at the photo above of the room set up to see the green screen standing in the back of the room. Here are two pics that get the point of what we with it did across:

"Champagne" and Snacks:

Of course, I hardly took any pictures of the snacks. We had sparkling cider in champagne flutes, mini cupcakes (from Stop & Shop), individual goldfish bags, and water. It was perfect.

What worked least: The green screen, which ordinarily I really love, was probably more trouble than it was worth for this program. In the past, when I've done photoshoots, I've had the time to choose backgrounds with families, pose them a little, and then take multiple shots. In this program, it was just too chaotic and a regular background would have worked the same or possibly even more efficiently, since patrons would have been able to just take their own photos, as opposed to relying on us. In years past, I used this one from Oriental Trading and would totally use it again in the future.

I feel like I have to share that we HAVE had some amazing green screen photoshoots on other days (seriously, a good amount of them!), but that it was just the wrong fit for this particular program. This also seems like a good time to share my top 3 from Halloween (that's us in the bottom one!):

What worked best: The countdown + balloon drop combo. So. Much. Excitement.

Overall, I think this may have been my most successful program ever, in terms of numbers. It's too bad it took me so long to get it up on my blog!