What’s a baby shower without a baby shower game or two?

While it’s always lovely to catch up with friends and celebrate your impending birth, your baby shower is a great opportunity to have a little fun and laughter too. So here are our favourite baby shower games:

• Baby find-a-word scrambler

  Create your own letter puzzle on the computer and fill it with baby-related words hidden throughout. Guests have 3 minutes to find as many words as they can.

• Guess the baby name

  Prepare a list of 20 boys and 20 girls names (including the ones you like best and are likely to use in naming your baby) and promise a prize to whoever guesses the name correctly once your baby’s born.

• Put a face to the name

  Ask guests to supply you with their own baby photos, spread them all out on a table and get everyone to guess who’s who.

• The forbidden word

  As your guests arrive, give each one a bracelet (this could simply be a piece of knotted thread) and tell them that the word ‘baby’ is now off-limits. Each time they hear the word, they can claim the bracelet from the person who uttered the word. The guest who ends up with the most bracelets wins.

• How big is your belly?

  Using a ball of string or wool, have each guest pull out a length that they believe would perfectly fit around your pregnant belly. After they have cut their string to the appropriate length, compare the results to your actual tummy.

• How many clothes pegs?

  Fill a jar with clothes pegs (or any other smallish baby-related item) and ask each guest to guess how many are in the jar. It helps with this game to count the items as they go into the jar, as opposed to trying to tally them up at the party!

• Baby product madness

  Giving each guest a pen and paper, ask them to list as many baby products as they can in 3 minutes. These lists start easily enough but most people will have to start digging deep to keep writing for the full 3 minutes. Award a prize to either the guest with the most products, or the most questionable product!

• Baby food blues

  Buy 10 different varieties of jarred baby food and set out in unmarked bowls. Ask your guests to participate in a taste test – the guest who guesses the most different flavours correctly wins. A good tip for playing this game is to write the baby food flavour on a post-it pad and stick on the underside of the bowl before you begin playing the game – you don’t want to mix up your carrots and sweet potato!

• A drinking game of a very different sort

  Using baby bottles and teats, fill baby bottles with milk (or alternative drink). Each participant must drink the bottle as a baby would and the guest who drinks the most in the allotted time wins.

• The ultimate baby song list

  Give each guest a pen and paper and ask them to write down every song they can think of with the word ‘baby’ in the title in 5 minutes. It sometimes helps with this game to play this as a team event – pairing guests up often gets the song name juices flowing.

• Baby shower memory game.

  Test your pregnancy brain with the classic memory game with a baby theme. On a large tray collect together baby-related items – bib, talcum powder, nappy, rattle, nail clippers, baby sock and the like – and cover with a tea towel. Give each guest a pen and paper and show them the contents of the tray for one minute. Remove the tray from the room and give them three minutes to write down as many items from the tray as they can remember. To make this game a little trickier, include large and small items on the tray.

• Letters to the baby

  This is less a game, and more a lovely activity that all guests will want to participate in. After supplying them with notepaper and a pen, ask each guest to write a short note to your baby. This may be something they want to think about while they enjoy the festivities of your baby shower, but ask each of them to place their note into an envelope you have handy before they leave. These notes are a wonderful keepsake and will give you the warm-and-fuzzies long after your guests have left the party.

• Bobbing for cotton balls

  Fill a bowl with cotton balls and give your participant a tablespoon. After blindfolding them, ask them to scoop up as many cotton balls as they can using only the spoon and deposit them into an empty bowl. Sounds simple but this is actually quite tricky and guests are usually surprised by how few they have been able to scoop up.

• New parent questionnaire

  This game needs to be organised by a friend rather than the mother-to-be. The day before the baby shower, ask the dad-to-be a series of questions about parenting. Examples are:

  • How many nappies do you think a baby needs each day?
  • How many times will your baby feed each day?
  • How many hours does a baby sleep each day?
  • At what age does a baby start eating solid food?
  • Do you think that your baby will be born with a lot of hair?
  • How many kids do you want to have?
  • Who will be the disciplinarian in your household?

With your dad-to-be’s answers at hand, ask the mother-to-be how she thinks her partner will have answered each question. The results can be hilarious!

Baby shower prizes

While baby shower prizes are definitely not a mandatory part of your day, awarding a small prize to the winner of each game will lend your baby shower that extra lair of festivity.

Our top picks for baby shower prizes are:

• Dummy medals. Purchase some dummies and thread each one with a short length of ribbon and a nappy pin to create a ‘medal’.
• Chocolates. You can never go wrong with a couple of Lindt balls
• Bath treats. Delicious smelling soaps, bath oils and bath bombs are always popular
• Gourmet jelly beans. Considering they come in a million different flavours, everyone will love this prize.

Find more:

• Baby shower ideas
• Baby shower food
• Baby shower themes
• Who to invite to your baby shower
• Where to have your baby shower
• When to throw your baby shower
• Baby shower gift ideas

This article was written by Ella Walsh for Kidspot.