Baby shower games have a reputation problem.
The melted chocolate in a diaper. The measuring the bump with toilet paper. The guessing-the-puréed-baby-food-by-smell game that nobody actually wanted to play. These games got old years ago and yet somehow they still appear at showers everywhere, making half the guests silently wish they had left after the canapés.
The good news is that modern baby shower games are genuinely fun. They produce real laughter, real conversation, and real memories. They work for a group of twenty or a group of five. Some take thirty seconds to explain and some run as a background activity through the whole afternoon.
Here are 24 that are actually worth playing, organized by what kind of energy they bring to the room.
Icebreakers: For When Guests Are Still Getting to Know Each Other
1. Who Knows the Mama Best?
A classic for a reason. Prepare a list of twenty questions about the mama-to-be beforehand. Not baby-related questions. Her questions.
- What was her childhood nickname?
- What is her go-to comfort food?
- Where was the first holiday she took with her partner?
- What was her first job?
- What film can she watch on repeat and never get bored?
Guests write their answers. The mama reveals the correct answers at the end. Whoever has the most right wins. It is simple and it works because every table becomes a miniature debate about which answer is correct before the reveal happens.
2. Baby Photo Guessing Game
Ask every guest to send a baby photo of themselves to the host in the week before the shower. Print them out and number them without names. Display them on a board or pass them around the tables.
Guests write down who they think each photo is. The person who correctly identifies the most people wins.
Works brilliantly for groups who have known each other for a while and even better for groups who have not, because it forces conversation and connections between guests who might otherwise not speak to each other. Film the reactions when the answers are revealed. They are often the funniest part.
3. Find the Guest Bingo
Before the shower, prepare bingo cards where each square contains a description rather than a number.
Examples:
- Has a birthday in the same month as the mama
- Has visited more than five countries
- Knows how to knit
- Has the same middle name as someone else at the shower
- Has met the baby’s grandparents
Guests mingle and find someone who fits each description, writing their name in the square. First to complete a row calls bingo. Gets everyone talking within the first fifteen minutes and removes the stiff early-shower energy before it has a chance to settle.
4. Two Truths and a Baby Lie
Everyone at the shower writes down three statements about themselves, two true and one made up. But the twist: all three statements have to be baby or pregnancy related.
Examples:
- “I was born two months early”
- “I have five brothers and sisters”
- “I delivered someone’s baby on a train”
The group guesses which statement is the lie. Go around the room. Works especially well for smaller showers where everyone has a chance to share and the stories that come out of it are often extraordinary.
Trivia and Knowledge Games
5. Baby Trivia Quiz
Prepare a printed or digital quiz with twenty questions across different categories.
Sample categories:
- General baby knowledge (average newborn weight, how many nappies a day a newborn uses)
- Famous fictional babies (who is Maggie Simpson’s mum?)
- Celebrity baby names
- Pregnancy facts
- Questions about the parents-to-be
Run it as individual scoring or as a table team game. Teams produce more noise and more collective investment in the answers. Individual scoring is better for smaller groups.
6. Over or Under
Prepare a list of statements with a number in them. Guests decide whether the real number is over or under what is stated.
Examples:
- “A newborn blinks about 2 times per minute when awake.” (Over or Under?)
- “The mama-to-be has known her partner for 4 years.”
- “The average baby says their first word at 9 months.”
The mix of general knowledge questions and personal ones about the mama makes it feel both fun and intimate. Write the correct answers on a separate card and reveal them one by one. Groan reactions to wrong guesses are half the entertainment.
7. Nursery Rhyme Quiz
Read out nursery rhymes with key words replaced by blanks and have guests fill them in. Sounds easy until people discover how many nursery rhyme lyrics they have completely misremembered over the years.
Add a second round where guests have to identify nursery rhymes from emoji sequences. Humpty Dumpty written entirely in emojis is both ridiculous and harder than it has any right to be.
8. Baby Song Title Quiz
Play the opening five seconds of well-known songs that contain the word “baby” in the title or lyrics. Guests write down the song name and artist. Whoever gets the most right wins.
Put together a mix that covers different decades and genres so no single guest has a clean sweep. The moment someone confidently writes down the wrong answer and refuses to admit it is the most entertaining part of every round.
Creative and Craft Activities
9. Onesie Decorating Station
Set up a table with plain white onesies in newborn and 0-3 month sizes, fabric markers, stamps, stencils, and a few example designs for inspiration.
Each guest decorates a onesie. The mama-to-be receives a collection of completely unique, one-of-a-kind pieces for her baby made by the people who love her. Long after the shower, she will be dressing her baby in something a specific person at that specific table made and she will remember it every time.
Let it run as a background activity throughout the shower rather than as a timed game. Guests drift over when they want to and the table stays active for the whole event.
10. Advice and Wishes Cards
Provide each guest with a card that has two sections: one for wishes for the baby and one for advice for the parents. The advice section is where the real gold comes from.
Experienced parents write genuinely useful things. Friends write funny things. Grandparents write the things they wish they had been told. Collect all the cards, tie them together with a ribbon, and give them to the mama as a keepsake.
These cards get brought out years later. They become something the family returns to repeatedly. A simple activity that produces something lasting.
11. Baby Prediction Cards
Each guest predicts key details about the baby before the birth: date, time, weight, height, first word, personality type, and future career if they feel creative.
Collect the cards in an envelope. Open them at the baby’s first birthday and see whose predictions came true. Award prizes at that point for whoever was closest on each category.
It turns a single shower game into something that connects to a future celebration and gives guests a reason to look forward to being in touch a year from now.
12. Book for Baby
Ask every guest to bring their favourite childhood book as their gift and write an inscription inside the front cover. During the shower, share why you chose it. Tell the story of reading it as a child or of reading it to your own children.
The mama ends up with a curated library of books that each carry a story and a handwritten message from someone who loves her. This activity doubles as a gift and as a conversation starter that produces some genuinely moving moments around the room.
13. Design the Nursery Art
Set up an art station with a large canvas, acrylic paints, brushes, and a theme (animals, stars, watercolour flowers). Every guest adds something to the canvas. By the end of the shower, there is a collaborative piece of art made by every single person in the room.
Frame it. Hang it in the nursery. The baby grows up with a piece of art on their wall that was made by everyone who celebrated their arrival.
Funny and Active Games
14. Nappy Changing Race
Divide guests into pairs. One person is the baby. One person is the parent. The parent has to put a nappy on the baby as fast as possible, using only the non-dominant hand, blindfolded.
The results are chaotic. The baby’s reaction is often the funniest part. Works brilliantly for a co-ed shower where guests who have never changed a nappy in their lives discover that they are somehow worse at it than they imagined.
15. Baby Sock Sorting Race
Scatter twenty pairs of baby socks across a table completely mixed up. Set a two-minute timer. Guests race to find and match as many pairs as possible.
The catch: baby socks in similar colours are genuinely difficult to match under time pressure. The stress is real and ridiculous simultaneously. After the game, gather all the socks and present them to the mama as part of the baby’s wardrobe. The game doubles as a gift.
16. The Emoji Nursery Rhyme Game
Print out cards where nursery rhymes and children’s book titles are represented entirely in emojis. Guests guess what they mean.
“Three Blind Mice” becomes three mouse emojis and a pair of glasses crossed out. “Goodnight Moon” is obvious until the emoji sequence gets longer and more ambiguous and the table dissolves into debate about whether that is definitely a moon or possibly a banana.
17. Balloon Baby Twist
Every guest tucks a balloon under their shirt. Then everyone has to complete a series of tasks without popping the balloon or letting it fall.
Pick up a item from the floor. Hug the person next to you. Sit down and stand up again. Tie your shoelace.
Tasks that seem simple become physically absurd the moment there is a balloon bump involved. The empathy for the mama-to-be is both genuine and funny in equal measure.
18. Baby Food Taste Test
Remove labels from six to eight jars of baby food. Number each one. Give guests a small spoon each and a scorecard.
They taste each one and guess the flavour. Straightforward in theory. Genuinely difficult in practice. Something that smells like pea and broccoli but tastes like sweet potato is a surprisingly common experience and the table reactions tell the story better than any description.
Games That Work for Everyone
19. Kahoot Baby Quiz
Load a Kahoot quiz on a laptop and project it on a screen or TV. Guests play on their phones.
The live leaderboard, the competitive music, and the instant results make Kahoot feel significantly more exciting than a printed quiz. Run it in teams for maximum noise. Questions appear on screen and answers go in on individual phones. Works for any group size and requires almost no printed preparation.
20. The Memory Tray Game
Arrange fifteen to twenty baby items on a tray: a dummy, a tiny sock, a rattle, a safety pin, a muslin square, a bottle teat. Carry it around the room and let guests study it for sixty seconds. Remove the tray. Everyone writes down everything they can remember.
The person with the most correct items wins. Add a twist by removing one or two items between rounds and asking guests to identify what is missing.
21. Celebrity Baby Name Game
Read out a list of celebrity baby names without giving the celebrity parents. Guests guess who the parents are.
Anyone who has followed celebrity news in the last decade has a significant advantage. Anyone who has not will discover that names like Apple, North, and Cosimo are harder to place under time pressure than they look. The rounds where everyone is completely stumped are the most entertaining.
22. Custom Hashtag Challenge
Create a custom shower hashtag and print it on a card at every place setting. Throughout the shower, guests post their best photos, videos, or moments using the hashtag.
At the end of the shower, the most creative or most liked post wins a prize. The mama ends up with a curated social media collection from the whole event. An option for the group who find active games difficult but are all on their phones anyway.
23. First Word Predictions
Every guest writes down a prediction for the baby’s first word. Place all predictions in a sealed envelope and give it to the mama with a note: open when the baby says their first word.
The predictions range from sincere to outrageous. Some guests will write “mama.” Some will write “pizza.” One person will write something that will be referenced at family dinners for years. When the first word eventually happens and the envelope is opened, whoever guessed correctly gets a prize even if that prize is just the satisfaction of being right about something that was never knowable.
24. Nappy Message Station
Set up a table with a basket of fresh nappies, permanent markers, and a sign that reads: “Write a message, joke, or word of encouragement on a nappy for the 3am changes.”
Guests write whatever they want. Funny things. Heartfelt things. Dad jokes. Practical advice. Quotes. The mama opens a nappy at 3am in the dark and finds a message from someone she loves. It is a small thing and it genuinely means something in the moment.
Wrapping It Up
You do not need all 24. Nobody does.
Pick three or four that match the energy of the group and the length of the afternoon. One icebreaker to start. One active or funny game mid-way through. One creative activity that runs in the background. One that leaves the mama with something to keep.
That combination carries any shower. The rest is just details.