All Day Around the World New Year's Eve Celebration for Kids

I love the idea of New Year’s Eve, but at best, one of my three kids would actually make it to midnight. This year (and hopefully for many years to come) we will be starting ringing in the new year when the first places in the world welcome the new year and continue every hour until they fall asleep.

Here is a cheat sheet for those in Eastern Standard Time of who is ringing in the new year at what time.

Where	What time on our clock for their midnight
Samoa and New Zealand	6	AM
Fiji	7	AM
Melbourne, Australia and Sydney, Australia	8	AM
Guam	9	AM
Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan	10	AM
Hong Kong, Philippines and Singapore	11	AM
Bangkok, Thailand and Christmas Island	12	noon
Bangladesh	1	PM
India	1:30	PM
Pakistan	2	PM
Dubai	3	PM
Nairobi, Kenya and Moscow, Russia	4	PM
Jerusalem and Cairo, Egypt and Greece	5	PM
Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Belgium and Denmark	6	PM
Senegal and Dublin Ireland	7	PM
Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa and Azores well off the coast of Portugal	8	PM
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands – Where Penguins Live	9	PM
Buenos Aires Argentina	10	PM
Santiago Chili and Caracas Venezuela	11	PM
FLORIDA	12	midnight
Nashville and Mexico City	1	AM
Denver	2	AM
Los Angelos, CA	3	AM
Alaska	4	AM
Honolulu, HI	5	AM
American Samoa	6	AM

We also made pendants out of paper for each place to add to our homemade necklace as it becomes 2024 in each location.

We plan on talking about each location and depending where we are during their time also doing noise makers and poppers and such.

For bonus we will be doing some traditions specific to their locations. For example:

11 AM – In the Philippines a new year tradition is wearing polka dots and eating round foods. So we will be snacking on donut holes and I have circle stickers to put on for the 11 AM celebration of the Philippines’ new year.

6 AM or any of the hours till 5 PM – In Russia some people have a 12 second moment of silence to ring in the new year. Since Russia stretches 11 time zones you can pick any of those to observe this tradition.

5 PM – A tradition in Greece for New Year’s involves pomegranates. My children don’t know much about the fruit so I bought a few and we will be breaking them open and trying them.

6 PM – A tradition in Denmark for New Year’s is to jump on, off or over something to literally jump into the new year. We will be doing this count down on a chair and jumping off when we yell happy new year.

6 PM – In France a stack of pancakes is traditional on New Year’s. So, our family will be having pancakes for dinner in honor of France getting to 2024 around 6pm our time.

9 PM – In Brazil on New Year’s some wear white and jump into the ocean. If all your kids are still up at this point you could dip your foot in a ocean, gulf, bay or lake. (Be careful of alligators if you pick lake). Note: Brazil is represented in 4 time zones, so you could pick any of them.

11 PM – Some from Latin American countries or Spain will eat 12 grapes (one at a time) at their midnight for good luck. This can be done at a variety of times, as it covers multiple countries.

1 AM – A superstition for some places in Mexico is that walking around with an empty suitcase will bring you good luck and you will get to travel more in the new year. So if anyone is still up at 1 AM they will be getting a rolling suitcase and doing laps around the house till they fall asleep, haha.

Disclaimer: I have never lived outside of the USA so basing the traditions of other countries on what I have seen online.

Other bonus ideas:

Get a globe or map where you can track the new year coming!
Other fun facts and traditions that don’t have to do with New Year’s for each of the countries could also be a lot of memorable fun for your family.
Watch on your TV from Youtube their countdown and fireworks, etc from this year or a previous year.

Looking for more New Year’s fun? Check out these kid-friendly New Year’s Eve events around Clearwater-St. Pete