Safe and Easy New Years Eve Poppers for Kids – DIY

One of my family’s Christmas traditions is the opening of “Christmas Poppers.”   Whoever gets the bigger end of the paper tube, wins the prize.  Contents usually include a paper crown, a silly joke and a little gift of some sort.

Since my kids have grown up, I usually buy our Christmas poppers at Costco (the prizes are a little nicer!).    But when I put our poppers in the basket to set by our Christmas tree, I realized that now that my granddaughter, Gwyneth is 2 ½, she would also love this and would want to be a part of the fun.  After looking in stores and on the Internet with no luck,  I decided to make my own.

I purchased a few small  “toddler-friendly” trinkets and saved empty paper towel tubes.  I cut the paper towel tubes into thirds.  Then I took each third, and cut it in half again, and put a little toy inside each set (see picture below).  The reason I cut the thirds in half, was so that when the wrapping paper ends were pulled, the toy would pop out of the paper tube easier.

Then I wrapped the tubes in tissue paper and tied the ends with ribbon.  Too easy.  Of course, there won’t be the “pop,” but she won’t notice, and will just enjoy being a part of the fun.  I did a quick test to see if it would work by pulling on each end of the tissue paper, and they worked like a charm!

Update!

Gwyneth absolutely LOVED these! They were easy to pull, she was very excited to ask various family members to join her in this activity and we all enjoyed the prizes in the end, too. I will definitely be making these in the future!

Paper towel or toilet paper tubes

Trinkets- I used little bracelets, bouncy balls, glow sticks (adult supervision!)

Tissue paper

Ribbon

See directions above!