Alternative Baby Shower Games Ideas

Recently I had the wonderful task of planning a baby shower for my friend to celebrate the final few weeks of her pregnancy. It was a simple afternoon, we opted to make it a surprise (although I'm pretty sure she'd worked it out as my 6-year-old is not the best surprise keeper). I invited a handful of her friends over to mine, we all made different food items, from sandwiches and crudites to cakes and cookies, and I instructed her husband to bring her over after the other guests had arrived.

I wanted to plan some games for the afternoon, however, I've never been keen on the more traditional guessing the "poo" or tasting baby food. So, I decided to get creative and come up with my own games and I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

I decided to run the games as a quiz with three rounds, but these could easily be adapted into separate games if you prefer. Here's what we did:

Celebrity Baby Name or Not

I had ChatGPT give me a list of names with a mix of real celebrity baby names and made-up names, you can find a copy of my list here. You can then either give the list as an answer sheet or read the names out to the teams to guess. I gave one point for each real/fake they got right and an extra point if they were able to name one or both of the parents for the real names.

Pack Mummy's Hospital Bag

I bought a selection of items which are a must-have for the hospital bag. I laid them out and gave the guests around 30s to try and remember as many items as possible. When the time was up I covered the items and gave guests two minutes to try and write down as many items as they could remember. The bonus with this game is it doubles up as a gift for the Mum-to-be at the end.

The items I included in the game were:

• Nappies

• Baby wipes

• Breast pads

• Maternity pads

• Muslins

• Lip balm

• Hand cream

• Sweets

• Energy drink

• Toothpaste

• Mouthwash

• Chewing gum

• Shower gel

Music Round

What quiz doesn't include a music round? For this game, I selected ten famous children's programs and played around 2 seconds of each for the teams to guess. Top tip with this one, listen to your choices first as some songs start with the program name within the first two seconds.

Here are the songs I used (and feedback on how they went down):

• Bluey Theme Tune - fairly easy, but a safe choice

• Hey Duggee - names the Squirrels which makes it obvious for anyone who has seen the program

• Peppa Pig - very easy, but a safe choice

• Paw Patrol - says the name at the very beginning, I don't advise using

• In the Night Garden - a good one as most know it but struggle to recall it

• Postman Pat - another good one many know but struggle to recall

• Octonauts - you need fast fingers, it's a good opening but says the name around 2 seconds

• Fireman Sam - again you need fast fingers as the lyrics make it obvious around 3 seconds

• Peter Rabbit - also needs fast fingers as says the name around 2 seconds

• Something Special (Mr Tumble) - this is a hard one as it's not obvious but most should know it when told

At the end I had the team pass papers to mark, we had a tie for first place so as a tie-breaker I had the teams guess the size of Mum's bump (circumference, not top to bottom) which was a bit of fun to decide the winner.