Printable Baby Shower Games: A Free Set and How to Run It

The short version Our free set has five games on six pages: bingo, a baby word scramble, nursery rhyme finish-the-line, predictions and wishes for baby, plus an answer key. Print bingo and wishes cards on light cardstock, the rest on copy paper, and play three games at most.

What is in the free set

The baby shower games printable is six pages. Below is each sheet, what it asks of your guests and where it fits in the party.

Page 1: Baby shower bingo

Four different bingo cards, filled with baby gift words, share one page. Cut them apart and give one to each guest before the gifts come out. As the parent-to-be unwraps each present, guests mark any square that matches it, and the first full line wins.

Four designs means that at a party of 20, five guests hold each card. When one of them gets a line, the other four get it on the same gift. Decide before you start whether everyone who calls it together wins or you draw one name from the group. Our baby shower bingo guide covers the blank-card version where guests fill in their own squares, plus blackout rounds and what to do when there are only a few gifts.

Page 2: Baby word scramble

Fifteen baby words with their letters mixed up. Guests unscramble as many as they can in a set time, and the answers are on the last page. It suits the first half hour while people arrive and find seats, because it needs no explanation and nobody has to stop talking to play. Five minutes is about right. If your guests like to compete, let them work in pairs, which also halves your printing.

Page 3: Nursery rhyme finish-the-line

Twelve traditional rhymes, each cut off partway, and guests write the rest of the line. Anyone who has sung these to a toddler lately has an edge, and reading the key aloud is where the laughs come from, because the wrong guesses are better than the right ones. Give it five minutes, then score it the same way as the scramble.

Page 4: Baby predictions card

One card per guest with lines for the birth date, the weight, the hair, who the baby will look like and the baby’s first word. It costs no party time: guests fill it in over food and drop it in a basket. Keep these. If you want a winner, the parents can pick one after the birth and mail a small prize then.

Page 5: Wishes for baby cards

Four cards to a page, each a short note from a guest to the baby. Of the five sheets, this is the one the parents will keep, so it is worth printing on something sturdier than copy paper. Put a small stack and pens on each table, or set them next to the guest book.

Page 6: Answer key

The answers to the scramble and the rhymes. Print one copy for whoever reads the answers out, and keep it face down until time is called.

How many copies to print

The table assumes 20 guests. For other counts, scale the rows and round up.

For 30 guests that becomes 8 bingo pages, 8 wishes pages and 30 of everything else. Add two or three spares of each sheet for late arrivals, partners who decide to play and the pen that leaks.

Paper and printer tips

Standard copy paper is 20 lb, and it is fine for the scramble, the rhymes and the predictions cards. Each gets written on once.

Bingo cards get handled for an hour and marked with whatever you hand out, so light cardstock holds up better. 65 lb cover stock sits at the light end of cardstock. Check the heaviest paper your printer takes before you buy a pack, and print a single test page first.

Bingo dauber ink is wet. If you plan to use daubers, test one square on the paper you chose before you print 20 cards.

Print single-sided. On thin paper, ink from one side can show through to the other.

The set is black-and-white friendly, so black ink is enough. If you want color, print each game on a different pastel copy paper. It also makes the room easy to direct (“everyone with a yellow sheet, pens down”).

Print and cut the night before. Bingo and wishes cards take longer to cut than people expect, and a paper trimmer beats scissors if you can borrow one.

How to run the games on the day

A rough order that keeps the games short and leaves most of the party for talking.

1. Pick three games, four at most One quiet sheet for arrivals, bingo during gifts, and one quick game near the end is plenty. Every game you add takes time from the conversations people came for.
2. Set the quiet sheets at each seat The scramble, the rhymes and the predictions card can sit on the table with a pen. Guests start when they sit down, and nobody has to gather the room.
3. Hand out bingo cards during the meal Cards should be in hands before the first gift comes out. Bingo then runs exactly as long as the gift opening does.
4. Give timed games a limit and say it out loud Five minutes for the scramble, five for the rhymes. Call time, have neighbors swap sheets, and read the answers from the key.
5. Put one person in charge of the keepsakes Predictions and wishes cards go home with the parents. A basket by the door and one named collector keeps them from ending up in the recycling with the scrambles.
6. Announce every winner at once Save the winners for one moment near dessert. The party stops for a minute instead of four separate times.

Six games that need no printing

These fill gaps between the sheets, and most of them run in the background while people eat and talk.

Guess the belly

Pass around a ball of string or ribbon and scissors. Each guest cuts a length they think will fit around the parent-to-be’s belly, then you measure at the end and the closest wins. Ask the guest of honor first. Some people would rather not be measured in front of the room.

Don’t say “baby”

Each guest gets a clothespin on arrival. Anyone who hears someone say “baby” takes that person’s pin, and whoever has the most at the end wins. It runs the whole party without stopping it.

Pacifier hunt

Hide small plastic pacifiers or tiny plastic babies around the room before anyone arrives, and the guest who finds the most by the end wins. Write down how many you hid. These are small enough to be a choking risk, so skip this one if toddlers are coming.

Candy in a bottle

Fill a baby bottle or a jar with candy and count as you go. Set out slips and a pen, and the closest guess wins the candy.

Baby animal match

Read out baby animal names and have guests shout or write the adult animal: a joey (kangaroo), a cygnet (swan), a leveret (hare), a kid (goat). Mix easy ones with hard ones so everyone gets at least one.

Thank-you envelope raffle

Each guest addresses a blank envelope to themselves when they arrive and drops it in a bowl. Draw one or more for prizes at the end. The parents go home with a stack of addressed envelopes for thank-you notes.

Picking games for your guests

Look at the guest list before the game list. A room of close friends will play anything. A mix of coworkers, in-laws and neighbors who have never met does better with games they can join at their own pace: the seat sheets, the candy jar, the envelope raffle.

If the parent-to-be dislikes games, the predictions and wishes cards are a fair compromise. They read as activities more than games, and they leave something behind. If partners and friends of every kind are coming, our coed baby shower games guide leans toward games that work for a mixed room. Hosting a bridal shower later? The bridal shower games guide has its own free set.

The night-before checklist

• Bingo and wishes cards printed on cardstock, the rest on copy paper
• Bingo and wishes cards cut apart and counted into piles
• One answer key printed and set aside for the person reading answers
• A pen for every guest, plus spares
• Prizes wrapped and labeled by game
• A basket or large envelope for predictions and wishes, and one person named to collect them
• String or ribbon and scissors, if you are guessing the belly
• Pacifiers hidden and the count written down
• Candy counted into the bottle and the number written down
• A quick check with the parent-to-be on which games to drop

What people actually say

In a r/BabyBumps thread on games and prizes people liked, one mom’s sister ran a bingo game where guests wrote in the gifts they expected and crossed them off during unwrapping. Another commenter described the thank-you envelope raffle above and a single diaper taped under a random chair, with the table centerpiece as the prize. A third kept a registry price-guessing game short on purpose, at six items.

A r/pregnant thread on games people would want to play is full of short timed sheets: a baby alphabet where each letter needs a different baby item, and an emoji quiz of nursery rhymes and kids’ books, each limited to three minutes. Ribbon belly guesses, candy in a bottle and a tiny-baby hunt came up there too.

Passive games won in a r/BabyBumps thread asking whether shower games are cringe. One commenter liked games people could join or ignore, where the only interruption was announcing winners. Another liked “wishes for baby” letters, and two named gift bingo as the way to keep guests invested in gift opening.

Not everyone wants games at all. In r/BabyBumps on whether games are necessary, one guest said only about half the room joined in at a recent shower, and a host felt most showers cram in too many games. A r/pregnant thread from people who hate shower games had one host who set up an optional game table and read the winners after dessert. Another mom there said the advice cards set at each seat were her favorite part of her own shower.

In a r/BabyBumps thread on what people liked most about their shower, one mom said predictions cards were the most fun after the baby arrived and everyone could see who was right. Another warned that sitting through a half-hour quiz gets tedious and asked hosts to keep games quick, and a third said the best showers she had been to had one or two activities.