With a changing lifestyle and a busy schedule, life moves fast, and what is left behind are the family moments we spent together. Those spontaneous moments often become the stories you'll tell for years. No one mentioned the holiday in the townhouse during Thanksgiving dinner. They discussed the afternoon the car broke down, the rainy-day experiment that somehow worked, and the road trip where everyone forgot all plans and just drove. The family activities that stick are seldom the ones that are planned to perfection and have lots of opportunities to get away.
However, a list helps to bridge the gap between “we should do that” and a confirmed date. A list of 50 activities for families – some require them and others they create – varied enough that most families will have 5 to 6 they've been putting off and doing now.
These family excursions remain forever in the "we keep talking about it" file. All they want is a set date, not ideal weather, since that doesn't happen.
Take a Hot Air Balloon ride at sunrise. The alarm is harsh. Nobody regrets it.
Take a glass-bottom boat tour. Nothing is more impressive than the reef without getting wet.
Hire half-day kayaks or canoes. The point is the slowness.
Hike a trail with something at the end. There needs to be a place to stop, a point of view, a lake, something — a place where kids will say, ‘Now we're back to the car before mile one' if there's no place to stop.
Go for a road trip with no destination in mind. Decide at exits. Eat at diners. This is one that always scores high years after.
Camp in a state park. Cabin or campsite, not a hotel. A totally different level of experience.
Go to a county fair or small-town festival for one day. The rides are lacking, and the food is too expensive,e and the mood is invaluable.
Take part in an escape room with your family. The way your family deals with pretend pressure is very telling.
Get a helicopter sightseeing flight to a place that is familiar. What you see from an altitude is what you see.
Do an impromptu train ride. Passing and motion cannot be duplicated by anything else that the motion and passing landscape does.
The longest-lasting and fun family time activities are usually free and require no reservations. The family must create the experience, not eat up the experience — this is where good stories are typically found.
Go to all of your city's parks in the summer. Treat it as if it is a project. Keep a log.
Make something out of raw materials. A raised garden bed, birdhouse, and bench. The building is more important than the thing.
Hold a neighborhood scavenger hunt, and offer real prizes. Real prizes. Not candy.
Have a board game tournament with an umpire. Give this role at the beginning of the game, not in the middle of the game.
Use a projector for a backyard movie night. Clearly distinct from the living room in ways that are not easily described.
Venture to a farmer's market with a limited amount of money and prepare dinner from what is purchased. No store backup failures.
Have a walk to the sunrise in an unknown place, speaking very little during the walk. Much simpler and better than it sounds.
Go to an animal rescue center. Not a zoo. A location where the animals have a back-story.
Initiate a garden together and experience a season. The failures are a part of the activity as well.
Discuss an actual family issue that is important to a family member. Ground rules required.
Creative activities that truly stick are those in which there is something there at the end that wasn't there before — something the family can go back to later.
Create a small film using your cell phones from start to finish. Organize roles, write a story, and edit it. Quality is irrelevant.
Paint a room in the house together. The selection of the color is actually halfway.
Collect all the family recipes by rote learning, including the history of the recipes. Increases in value each year.
Make pottery at a local studio. All will be bad at it. The outcome will be adorable.
Bake a complex recipe that takes more than one person more than one day. Anything with actual stages like croissants, bagels, sourdough.
Make a scrapbook from pictures (print them out and put them in a folder). Digital albums don't do that.
Exchange letters with each other to be delivered in 1 year. Seal them, label them with the date, and store them safely.
To challenge everyone to draw the same object but all different. The actual activity is compared at the end.
As a group, learn a card game which involves real skill. Gin rummy, cribbage, or bridge, anything that has at least some depth to it.
Write and act out a short play using props or costumes of any available. It is the found costumes that are what make this work.
Ideas become reality for some families when they have a confirmation number. These are the family adventures that sit between "we should" and "we are doing that Saturday", and that "gap" can only be bridged by booking something.
Attend a live sports game. Any sport, any team. Everyone does the work.
Watch a live show at least once a year as a family. Start accessible. Build from there.
Take a food trip within your own city! Few people are aware of the location of their street at the street level.
Cook a real-time recipe with a professional chef. It's a good format: structured chaos, followed by dinner.
Attend an outdoor concert at an unfamiliar venue. The new environment alters the experience.
Go to a working farm at harvest time. Don't miss the view of the operational reality of where food comes from, once.
Go on a self-guided architectural walk in a neighborhood that you don't know. Two hours, a map, real interest.
Go on a zipline or aerial adventure as a group. The nerves that precede it are included.
Go to a live comedy show together. The shared experience of laughing at the same time in the same room is a different kind of thing.
Explore & browse Spur Experiences and agree on an experience to do together. They have offerings ranging from food tours to aerial experiences to water-based adventures. There is no better way to book than together.
The family things to do often result in discussions that are never expected. They are often the ones that pop up years later with no intention to create a “memory”.
Explore old family pictures and create a family history timeline. In some instances, the resulting stories are not what is expected.
Prepare a complete meal from a country none of you has ever been to. Always use a true recipe and NOT a simplified one!
Read a book together and then view the adaptation. The comparison discussion that follows is typically better than either.
Go to an area history museum you have never been to. Exhibits that no one visits are often the most intriguing.
Make a plan for a future trip while you are doing the activity. No trip was necessary yet: the map, the disagreements, the decisions.
Take a 90-minute "no tech" meal. Harder than expected. Worth doing regularly.
Start a family interview project. Have each member answer 10 questions. Securely store the recordings.
Write an ongoing family journal with changing authors and no parameters as to formatting. No limits on length, no restrictions on topics.
Participate in a different culture's festival. The land, music, and past of an event you don't know.
Take a day off of calendared activities. No timetable, no agenda; no planning done. Don't complain about what happens; accept what happens. This one is the most difficult to come up with on this list and can be the greatest to come up with.
Now go through this list and observe which 3 or 4 come with a "Yes!!!" while reading by someone in your family — not the ones that look good in a photo, not the ones that sound impressive — but the ones that read "Yes!!!" by someone in your family. All of those are spots for which action should be taken first.
The distance between a good idea and a real memory is usually only a confirmed date. Not the next study or the next idea, not until the children are older, until the calendar is clear, or until the time is right. There is no right time. Families that do interesting things together are not families with more free time — they're families that got rid of ‘later in life' for interesting things forever.
If necessary, start small. We have done one activity this month. The family has one night out before the week's end. The first time you come up with a plan, it makes the second one seem like it, and the second plan makes the third seem obvious. It takes a chain reaction to get those things done together, not in the same room, and they just keep happening.
Spur Experiences is a great place to begin with for family activities where learning takes place through experience, and they are worth planning for. Most families have something they've been putting off for months in their catalog, and it is detailed enough that they won't end up spending two hours puzzling about what they want. Adventure experiences, food experiences, aerial tours, water-based outings-, it is all in one place, curated (not crowdsourced) and organized (not for you to organize) in advance. Twenty minutes spent with Spur Experiences and a date in mind usually brings that problem to an end, if your family has been ticking the same couple of “we should do that” things over and over without ever hitting upon one.
Pick one. Book it. From there on, it's all systems go.
No matter what you choose, the memories you make together will become cherished stories for years to come. Here’s to more laughter, adventure, and unforgettable moments with the people who matter most—your family.
