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31 Family Fun Activities for More Meaningful Connections

Our world today is dominated by screens and distractions. Many of us find ourselves spending more time browsing social media than interacting with those closest to us in meaningful ways. More than ever, it’s important to prioritize family time with family fun activities.

family fun activities

Multiple studies have proven that simply sitting down for family dinners every night greatly aids in the physical, emotional, and academic development of children. Just imagine how much your children could prosper with ongoing, fun activities that serve to not only uplift your kids but also help your entire family bond and become more tight-knit. Below, you’ll find ideas for 31 family fun activities to develop more meaningful connections with those you love most.

Family Fun Activities to Try together

1. Bake Together

Let mom, dad, and the kids each choose a recipe they would like to bake together. It could be anything bake-able – think muffins, pastries, cookies, or even something a little different like cake pops. Once recipes are selected, work together as a family to procure the necessary ingredients and work step-by-step to make a tasty baked treat that everyone can contribute to. If your family is pretty big, you can even elect to make a different recipe every week until everyone has had a chance to have their favorite recipe made!  One of my family’s favorite things to bake is cupcakes.

2. Interactive Story Time


Instead of just reading a story to your kids, get the whole family involved by acting it out instead! Everyone can play a character from the story, and you will surely have a fun memory to look back on for years to come. But don’t just stop there – go all-in with props, funny character voices, and homemade costumes!

3. Play Board Games

Playing board games together as a family can be a great way to pass the time during a lazy day. But don’t just settle for the same game over and over. Try adding a little something different by making up new rules or combine games together if you can! You can also work together to create your own games such as scavenger hunts or charades based on certain themes! Tap into your creative side a little bit and unleash your imagination.  You can even make this cool game night trophy for the winner!

4. Pizza Party

Gather up some sauce, dough, toppings, and a trusty oven to create your own pizzeria at home! Portion out enough dough for everyone for a small, personal pizza, and layout everyone’s favorite toppings to choose from. When you’re ready, throw those pizzas in the oven and enjoy! Everyone will love creating their own personal pizza while bonding together over this fun activity.  This Mini Biscuit Pizza recipe makes pizza night easy and delicious.

5. Arts & Crafts


There’s a ton of crafting ideas out there, from painting and coloring to making collages and even slime from household ingredients. Making physical art can also be a therapeutic exercise, so be sure your family craft time is a positive and uplifting experience for everyone. Don’t entertain critiques or criticism. Everyone’s artistic styles are different, and there is no wrong way to create something unique!  Wine Cork Painting is a fun craft everyone can do.

6. Make Pillow Forts

Don’t just settle for one pillow fort. Come together as a whole family and create a spectacular pillow castle instead! Pick up items around the house such as couch cushions, pillows, blankets, and even cardboard boxes to make a huge living room fort to chill in together.

7. Movie Night

Put on your most comfortable PJs and sit down together to watch a movie marathon for an entire day or evening with popcorn and movie theater-themed snacks. Note – this activity is perfect to do inside your family-created pillow fort!  Here are some great tips for creating the perfect family movie night.

8. Family Documentary

Use your smartphones or even an old camcorder if you have one to record an entire day of family activities. After you have the footage, watch it back and even work together to edit it to make a unique family movie! Several years later, you’ll be so happy to look back and remember the great day you had together and what each of you looked like at that period in time.

9. Garden Together

Not only is gardening a useful skill for kids to master, but it can also be a ton of fun! If space is a concern, start with a little backyard flower, herb, or vegetable garden. If you have a good amount of outdoor space, make it so that everyone has their own plot where they can choose to grow and tend to their own plants and flowers. Gardening together is a great activity to show kids that perseverance, hard work, and a little patience can pay off!

Family Garden Fun

10. Learn Sign Language

Not only is sign language a useful language to know to communicate with friends and family in the deaf community, but it is also fun to learn. Check out books or online videos and tutorials, practice with each other, and, when you’re comfortable enough, try communicating in just sign language for a whole day!  Find out more information about learning sign language here.

11. Dance Party 


Clear out space in your living room, put together a music playlist with a bunch of everyone’s favorite tracks, and have yourself a dance party! Bust some moves and have fun just shaking it out together. Oh, and dancing counts as a workout too!

12. Start Stretching

Yoga and Pilates are great ways to help develop flexibility and dexterity. Start out with beginner positions that everyone can easily do, and practice every day with progressively advanced movements until everyone is able to learn more complex positions. These exercises can be great ways to promote healthy minds and bodies; just be careful not to overdo them.  This site will be helpful if you are new to yoga.

13. Write Letters and Create Cards

Cards and letters can mean a great deal to elderly nursing home residents and our troops based overseas. Get together and craft your own handmade cards with cheery messages or draft appreciative letters and send them to military bases and local nursing homes. This is a great way to show your kids how they can easily spread love to fellow humans who may be feeling discouraged or lonely.

14. Home Fashion Show


Take out some older clothing items from your closet and have your little ones try them on to make fun and crazy outfits. Have them create their own catwalk and parents can play the role of judges and rate everyone’s outfit. For extra fun, the judges can even wear their own eccentric outfits!

15. Create a Story


There are many different ways to do this. Try using a chalkboard to write down words with everyone taking turns to add one word at a time until a full story develops. Or, try writing a story together and print it on paper that you can make into a homemade family storybook. You can also try working together on a mad libs activity if you need a place to start to get your creative juices flowing!

16. Create Tie-Dye Designs

Not only is tie-dye a fun activity, but it is also a great way for kids and adults alike to express their creativity! You can choose just about any article of clothing to tie-dye, and the design and color possibilities are endless! And the best part is that you will each have a memory to be happy about every time you choose to wear your tie-dyed item!

17. Have a Picnic


Bundle together some snacks, drinks, blankets, and pillows for your own little picnic excursion. Just select a nice shady spot in your backyard and set everything up! Picnics are a fun activity for the whole family and can be a much more relaxing way to share a meal together than a formal sit-down at a table. Note – you can also choose to do a picnic indoors if the weather is an issue.

18. Dance in the Rain


For most, rain in the forecast is usually a good excuse to stay indoors, but kids often love stomping in the puddles and playing in dirt and mud. Before you venture out, just be sure that it is not too cold and that there isn’t any lightning or thunderstorms nearby.

19. Learn To Sew


Those of us who know how to sew are aware that the skill always comes in handy at some point. Just knowing how to sew something simple, like affixing a button on a shirt, can make the difference between a sticky situation and an easy fix without worry. Taking time to learn basic stitches together can be a fun and very useful activity.

20. Scrapbook Together


Start making physical memories of your family’s time together by taking pictures over a couple of days or weeks and adding them to a photo album! Scrapbook the photos with other objects to make the activity more creative and meaningful. Everyone can create a page by using their own crafts and scrapbook elements and writing out their own notes next to their pictures.

21. Assemble Models


Go to your local hobby shop or shop online for model car, building, airplane, or robot, and take time to build it together. Building something piece-by-piece is a great way to teach kids about teamwork and how things go together to create something whole.

22. Video Game Night


Many of the modern video games on the market today have seamless multiplayer options that make playing together super fun and easy! The Wii system in particular has a great assortment of features and games for multiple players, but you can also use just about any game system by taking turns in playing a single-player video game. You can make it a competition, but remember it’s just meant to be a fun time – don’t take it too seriously!

23. Go Through Old Photos

Teaching your kids about your family’s history is a fun and important way to keep your family traditions and lineage alive for years to come. Your great grandmother’s pie recipe will mean much more to your children if they have a face to associate with the stories. As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words, and they also serve to preserve fond memories of a time gone by.

24. Life-Sized Portraits


Find a big piece of paper or poster board and have one person at a time lay face-up on it. Then, have someone else trace their figure with a marker to create a template. Once you’ve got everyone’s template completed, every member of the family can work together to draw it out to create a life-sized portrait. Make it realistic or silly – it’s up to you!

Family Karaoke Fun Activities

25. Karaoke Time

Karaoke is always a ton of fun, and singing along in front of the family is sure to generate a bunch of laughs. To kick it up a notch, you can even compete to see who can sing with the funniest song/voice combination –  bonus points for dancing along!

26. Four-Leaf Clover Scavenger Hunt

Finding a clover with four or more leaves is a rare treat. Crouching down and sorting through all the clovers in the backyard to find one can be a fun adventure. Finding one is always exciting and rewarding. You can also select something else for everyone to hunt for like dandelions, shells, or molehills!

27. Create a Critter House


Did you know that a birdhouse can be a shared home for many types of animals? Mice, squirrels, and even chipmunks love to settle down in birdhouses to create a home for their offspring or stay safe in the elements. Building one together can be a fun activity to create something for the furry friends around your neighborhood.

28. Take an Online Class

You can find online tutorials on everything from knitting a scarf to wreath making and cake decorating. Just search for a beginner video of something fun that each of you can do together and give it a try! It can also be fun to see how what you made compares to what was made in the video. You can make this a team effort or each member of the family can work on their own individual project! Individual projects can be a great way to teach your kids about creative expression and individuality to help them literally see how everyone is unique in awesome ways!

29. Make Rock Art


Go on a hunt for cool and interesting rocks outside. Once you’ve found a few with a good surface to paint, use your imaginations and add some paint to bring it to life! For example, take a lumpy rock and paint some legs, spots, and googly eyes on it to make it look like a real frog!

30. Create a Scavenger Hunt

Putting together your own scavenger hunts is a fun way to exercise your mind and body. And there are many ways to create a scavenger hunt! Get creative and theme it by size, room, or color! If you have older kids, you can make it more challenging by setting a time limit. For younger kids, be sure that they have fun without feeling the pressure to make it a competition. Remember, family activities should be fun!

31. Quiet Time


While not an activity per se, allotting family quiet time gives kids an opportunity to read, think, and quietly play by themselves while providing mom and dad a much-needed break! 



Here are a few ideas for quiet time

  1. Puzzles

  2. Word search

  3. Reading

  4. Educational worksheets
 
  5. Extra chores
Fun Activities for Families

Doing family fun activities together is a great way to bond and develop life-long memories with your children. When creating an activity, always ensure that fun is a priority; not everything needs to be a competition. Use your imagination, be creative, and just have fun together. With these activities, you’ll share 31 amazing days together that the whole family will enjoy.

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