Baby Shower Games: 16 Funny Game Ideas for Any Guest List

The best baby shower games depend on who is in the room. A mixed guest list of coworkers, in-laws and old school friends needs a quick icebreaker before anyone will guess or act anything out. A small circle of close friends can go straight to the funny ones, like baby charades, a blindfolded diaper pin and a left-right gift pass. If half the guests are joining by video, pick games that run on voice and chat.

The 16 baby shower game ideas below are grouped by that situation: icebreakers, guessing games about the mom-to-be, quiet games on paper, prize games, games that get people up, and one built for a video call. For every game you get the headcount, the minutes, the supplies, the play, the winner and one warning. Headcounts and minutes are our guesses for an unhurried afternoon, and a talkative group stretches them.

Pick a baby shower game by guest list and time

Game	Players	Time	Prep	Best for
Two Truths and a Lie	4–20	10–15 min	Pens and slips	Guests who just met
Guess the Baby	8–30	10 min	Baby photos collected a week ahead	Mixed guests
Would You Rather, parent edition	Any	5–15 min	A written list of questions	A warm-up for any group
Guess the Mom’s Measurements	6–30	10 min	Ribbon or yarn, scissors	Close friends, with her OK
Name That Sonogram	4–20	5–10 min	One scan picture, with the parents’ OK	Family and close friends
Due Date Predictions	Any	5 min to fill in	Prediction cards, an envelope	Everyone, remote guests too
Guess How Many in the Bottle	Any	Runs all party	A baby bottle filled and counted ahead	Arrivals and mixed guests
Gift-Opening Bingo	6–30	As long as the gifts	Blank 5×5 grids, pens	A long gift table
Left-Right Gift Pass	One circle	About 3 min	One wrapped prize, one printed story	Any group that can sit in a circle
Baby Word Scramble	Any	5–10 min	A printed sheet and answer key	Quiet guests, mixed ages
Finish the Nursery Rhyme	Any	10 min	A list of first lines	Grandparents and mixed generations
Baby Item Memory Tray	Any	5 min	12–15 baby items, a blanket	Mixed guests
Baby Charades	6–20 in two teams	15–20 min	Prompt slips, a timer	Close friends, a lively room
Pin the Diaper on the Baby	6–20	10–15 min	A poster, paper diapers, tape, a blindfold	A room with floor space
Baby Advice Telephone	8–16 per line	5 min	Nothing	Mixed guests
Twenty Questions	3–30	5 min a round	Nothing	Virtual showers

Baby shower icebreaker games for guests who just met

Icebreakers matter more at a shower than people expect, because the guest list is usually drawn from every part of the mom-to-be’s life. Baby showers were traditionally women-only, but Wikipedia’s baby shower article notes that mixed-sex showers have become more frequent, and some now take place at work. That means more guests who know the parents and nobody else. Start with one of these three before the guessing begins.

Two Truths and a Lie

Each guest offers three claims about their own life. Two are true, one is invented, and the rest of the room tries to spot the fake. That is the whole game as Wikipedia’s icebreaker entry describes it. At a shower, ask for statements about each guest’s own babyhood or how they met the mom-to-be: “I was born in a snowstorm,” “I sat next to her in chemistry,” “I was a twin.”

• Players: 4–20. Past about a dozen, split into tables so nobody waits through 30 rounds.
• Time: 10–15 minutes.
• Prepare: a pen and a slip of paper per guest, and two minutes for everyone to write.
• Winner: the guest who spots the most lies, or the one whose lie fooled the most people.
• Watch for: lies that are too wild. “I was born on the moon” is over in a second. Ask everyone to make the lie believable, and go first yourself so the room sees how close it can be.

Guess the Baby

Wikipedia’s baby shower article lists “guess the baby” among the pregnancy-themed games. The common version is a photo match. Every guest sends in a picture of themselves as a baby, the host numbers the photos, and everyone writes down which number belongs to which guest.

• Players: 8–30. Fewer than eight makes it too easy.
• Time: about 10 minutes, plus browsing time if the photos sit out from the start.
• Prepare: ask for photos in the invitation, a week ahead. Print and number them, or put them on a board. Add the parents-to-be, since theirs are the photos everyone wants to see.
• Winner: the most correct matches. Read the answers aloud one by one, because the reveals are the fun part.
• Watch for: guests who have no baby photo. Some were adopted later in childhood, and some families lost their albums. Say in the invitation that any childhood photo works and that sending one is optional.

Would You Rather, parent edition

Would You Rather poses a choice between two options, and under the usual rule nobody may answer “both” or “neither.” Write 10 to 15 questions about life with a newborn. Read each one aloud, and have guests raise a hand or move to one side of the room. Then let a volunteer from each camp argue for their answer.

• Players: any number, from a living room to a hall.
• Time: 5–15 minutes, depending on how long the arguments run.
• Prepare: your list. Try “Would you rather change every diaper for a week or do every 3 a.m. feeding for a week?” or “Would you rather have a baby who wakes at 5 a.m. every day or one who only naps in a moving car?”
• Winner: none. Stop after the question that gets the biggest laugh.
• Watch for: questions that sound like a verdict on the parents’ own plans, such as feeding methods, names or going back to work. Keep it on the chaos of baby life.

A coworker-heavy room may need more than three warm-ups. The large-group section of our icebreaker games for adults has human bingo and a birthday lineup.

Guessing games about the mom-to-be and the baby

Guessing games are the classic baby shower games, and they need the parents’ blessing more than any other kind. Wikipedia’s baby shower article names “guess the mother’s measurements” as a typical pregnancy-themed game, and it says modern showers can include identifying baby parts on a sonogram. Both are about her body and her pregnancy, so check with her privately before you plan either one.

Guess the Mom’s Measurements

Each guest cuts a length of ribbon or yarn they think would wrap once around the bump. Then the mom-to-be, or a friend she picks, holds each length around her middle to see whose comes closest.

• Players: 6–30.
• Time: about 10 minutes, most of it the measuring.
• Prepare: a ball of ribbon or yarn, a few pairs of scissors and a pen to write each guest’s name on a strip of tape stuck to their piece.
• Winner: the closest length. Agree before you start whether a piece that is too short can still win.
• Watch for: a mom-to-be who would rather not be measured in front of the room. Plenty of people feel that way. If she says no, run the bottle guessing game instead. It keeps the guessing and drops the tape measure.

Name That Sonogram

Pass around one ultrasound picture with the labels hidden and ask guests to say what each shape is: head, hand, foot, spine. The parents usually know what was pointed out at the scan, so ask them to mark the answers on a copy beforehand.

• Players: 4–20.
• Time: 5–10 minutes.
• Prepare: a printout, or the picture on a TV through a phone. Cover any printed labels with a sticky note.
• Winner: the most parts named correctly.
• Watch for: a picture almost nobody can read. Give one free hint, like “the head is on the left,” so it doesn’t stall. Some parents keep scans private, so this game is only for showers where they suggest it.

Due Date Predictions

Hand out a card at the door with blanks for the birth date, the time of day, the weight and the length, plus one fun line like hair color. The host seals the cards in an envelope and opens them once the baby arrives.

• Players: any number, and remote guests can send theirs by text.
• Time: 5 minutes to fill in. The result comes weeks later.
• Prepare: printed cards, pens and an envelope with the host’s name on it.
• Winner: the closest card overall. Score one point for each line that comes closest, and send the winner a small prize after the birth.
• Watch for: lines the parents are keeping secret. If they aren’t sharing the sex or the name, leave those off the card. Also keep the envelope with someone who will remember it. Wikipedia notes that showers are usually held before the last few weeks of pregnancy, so the cards may wait a month or more.

Baby shower game ideas with a prize: a guessing bottle, the gift table and a left-right pass

Prize games give guests something to watch for while the party carries on, and they take the least explaining. The bottle runs from the first arrival, bingo fills the gift opening, and a left-right story makes a quick finale. Plan one prize per game and a spare for a tie.

Guess How Many in the Bottle

For a shower, swap the usual candy jar for a clean, clear baby bottle filled with jelly beans or small wrapped sweets. It fits the theme, and the bottle goes home with the parents afterward. Stand it by the door with slips and a pen so guests write a name and a number on the way in. The host reads out the true count near the end of the party.

• Players: everyone who walks in.
• Time: none at the table. It runs in the background all party.
• Prepare: keep a tally as you drop the sweets in, and stick the total under the bottle on a strip of tape.
• Winner: the guess closest to the count. If two guesses tie, the earlier slip wins, or the two guests split the prize.
• Watch for: sweets within reach of small children. Older siblings often come along to showers, so stand the bottle on a shelf rather than a low table. A bottle also keeps guesses sensible, while a giant jar turns them into random numbers.

Gift-Opening Bingo

Wikipedia’s baby shower article says gifts are often opened at the party and that the host sometimes makes a game of it. Bingo is the easy way to do that. Before the opening starts, every guest fills a blank 5×5 grid with gifts they expect to see, with the center square free. As the mom-to-be opens each present, guests mark the matching squares.

• Players: 6–30.
• Time: exactly as long as the gift opening.
• Prepare: printed blank grids and pens. If there’s a registry, put a copy on each table for ideas.
• Winner: the first full line, called out loud. If gifts are left, play on to a full card for a second prize.
• Watch for: arguments over close calls, such as whether a swaddle counts as a blanket. Make the host the judge before anyone marks a square. When two guests shout at the same moment, the tie steps in our printable bingo rules settle it.

Left-Right Gift Pass

A left-right story moves one wrapped prize around the circle while someone reads aloud. Our left right baby shower game fits the four rules and the whole story on one page. Everyone sits in a circle, the mom-to-be starts with the prize, and it moves left at every LEFT and right at every RIGHT. Whoever holds it when the story ends keeps it.

• Players: any circle in which everyone can reach both neighbors. With more than about 20 guests, two circles can listen to the same reading.
• Time: about three minutes. The story is a little over 400 words, and that is our estimate at a slow reading pace.
• Prepare: one printed page in the reader’s hands and one small wrapped prize.
• Winner: whoever is holding the prize at the last line, which tells them it is theirs to keep.
• Watch for: the family name. The story follows the WRIGHT family, and WRIGHT counts as a RIGHT, so say so before you start.

We counted the cues on the page: 25 LEFTs, 17 RIGHTs and 10 WRIGHTs, 52 in all. The busiest run comes near the end, with five LEFTs in a row before the RIGHT sock. Because the rights outnumber the lefts by two, a perfect circle would hand the prize to the guest two seats to the mom-to-be’s right. That never happens, because somebody always fumbles a pass.

To run it with a gift for every guest, or with a story written about the parents themselves, see the setups on our left right story game page.

Quiet baby shower games on paper

Paper games suit guests who would rather stay in their seats, and they fill the gap while food goes around. Print them the day before and put a pen at every place.

Baby Word Scramble

An anagram uses all the letters of a word exactly once in a new order. For a baby word scramble, list 12 to 15 baby words, mix up the letters of each one, and see who unscrambles the most. Try BOTTLE, ONESIE, STROLLER, PACIFIER, LULLABY, NURSERY and BLANKET.

• Players: any number, alone or in pairs.
• Time: 5–10 minutes. Set a timer.
• Prepare: one sheet per guest and an answer key for the host.
• Winner: the most correct answers when the timer goes off. If two guests tie, the faster finisher wins.
• Watch for: words with a second answer. DIAPER also spells PAIRED and REPAID, and RATTLE also spells LATTER. Either drop those words or accept any real word. If your guests prefer hunting to unscrambling, put the same list into a word search grid instead.

Finish the Nursery Rhyme

Read the first line of a well-known rhyme and have guests write the next one. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” “Hey diddle diddle,” “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall” and “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop” are good starters. This game works best when grandparents are in the room, because they often win.

• Players: any number.
• Time: about 10 minutes for 10 rhymes.
• Prepare: your list of first lines and, for the host, the next line of each.
• Winner: one point per line that is close enough. Tell guests up front that the host decides what counts.
• Watch for: different wordings. These rhymes are old and travel in many versions. Wikipedia’s nursery rhyme entry dates the first printing of “Rock-a-bye Baby” to John Newbery, about 1765. Accept any version someone can recite. Guests who grew up with another language may not know the English set, so invite them to sing a lullaby they know. Wikipedia notes that lullabies exist in every culture.

Baby Item Memory Tray

This one is Kim’s Game, named for Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim. Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting rules put up to about 15 objects on a tray under a cloth, uncover it for one minute and have everyone list what they remember. For a shower, fill the tray with baby things: a pacifier, a bib, a bottle, a sock, a rattle, a teething ring, a nasal aspirator.

• Players: any number who can see the tray.
• Time: about 5 minutes: one minute to look and a few to write.
• Prepare: 12 to 15 items and a baby blanket to cover them. Gifts that have already been opened work well, and they go back to the parents afterward.
• Winner: the longest correct list.
• Watch for: items guests can’t name. Half the room will write “the nose thing” for a nasal aspirator. Decide whether a description counts before you lift the blanket.

Funny baby shower games that get guests out of their seats

The funniest baby shower games put someone on their feet doing something slightly ridiculous. Save these for a group that has warmed up, and keep the mom-to-be in the judge’s chair if she would rather watch.

Baby Charades

In modern charades, the actor mimes a word or phrase without speaking while their team guesses. For a shower, write prompts from early parenthood on slips: swaddling a baby, burping a baby, a diaper blowout, installing a car seat, assembling a crib, pacing the hallway at 3 a.m.

• Players: 6–20, in two teams.
• Time: 15–20 minutes, with one minute per turn.
• Prepare: 20 to 30 prompt slips in a bowl and a phone timer.
• Winner: whichever team guesses more prompts after every player has had a turn.
• Watch for: prompts about labor or bodily details. They seem funny on paper and land awkwardly in front of a coworker or a grandfather. The mom-to-be can guess from her seat without ever acting.

Pin the Diaper on the Baby

Pin the tail on the donkey has been a party game for well over a century. Wikipedia dates the earliest known version to 1899 and notes that adults play it with the donkey swapped for something else. Here the picture is a baby, and the “tail” is a paper diaper. Guests take turns in a blindfold, get gently spun, and try to tape the diaper where it belongs.

• Players: 6–20, one at a time.
• Time: 10–15 minutes.
• Prepare: a large baby outline drawn on poster paper and taped to a wall, one paper diaper per guest with their name on it, loops of tape instead of thumbtacks, and a blindfold.
• Winner: the diaper closest to where a diaper belongs.
• Watch for: the spin. Anyone can stumble after a few turns blindfolded, so clear gift bags and chairs out of the way. Let the mom-to-be play without the spin, or make her the judge.

Baby Advice Telephone

In telephone, players stand in a line and whisper a message from one to the next. Whoever stands last announces what they heard, and the group checks it against the starting message. At a shower, the message is one piece of parenting advice, and the first player writes it on a card before whispering it.

• Players: 8–16 per line. With more guests, run two lines with the same advice and see which one mangles it worse.
• Time: about 5 minutes.
• Prepare: nothing beyond a card and a pen.
• Winner: nobody, unless the line that keeps the advice closest counts as a win.
• Watch for: advice that only works in a whisper. The final version is said out loud in front of everyone, grandparents included.

Virtual baby shower games for guests on a video call

Several games above work over video with small changes. For Guess the Baby, share numbered photos on screen and have guests send answers to the host by private message. Email the word scramble the day before. Collect due date predictions by text, run Would You Rather as a show of hands, and let the host hold the guessing bottle up to the camera. The left-right pass needs everyone in one room, so save it for in-person guests.

Twenty Questions

In Twenty Questions, one player picks a thing and the others ask yes-or-no questions to work out what it is. At a virtual shower, the answerer picks a baby item and guests type their questions in the chat. A guest who guesses right becomes the next answerer. If 20 questions go by with no correct guess, the answerer wins and picks again.

• Players: 3–30 on one call.
• Time: roughly 5 minutes per item.
• Prepare: nothing. Have the answerer message their item to the host first, so it can’t quietly change halfway through.
• Winner: whoever guesses the item. Play three or four rounds.
• Watch for: people talking over each other. Keep questions in the chat, and have the host read them out in order and count them.

How many baby shower games to plan, and in what order

Two to four games fill most showers without crowding out the food and the gifts. That is our rule of thumb, not a rule. Order them by energy. Put the guessing bottle and the prediction cards by the door for arrivals, then play one icebreaker once most guests are seated. Run a paper game while plates go around and bingo during the gift opening, and finish with the left-right pass or charades.

Print everything the day before. A black-and-white copy saves ink and reads just as well. Our left-right story’s ink-saving copy swaps the colors for bold, underlined cue words.

We left out food-tasting games and anything built around drinking, since the guest of honor ends up watching instead of playing. If the guests are also swapping presents with each other, our gift exchange games sort 14 swaps by group size. For printable games beyond the shower, browse everything we make from our home page.