Family activity ideas for weekends you'll actually remember
· By Mitja Ahlin, founder
The problem with most family activity lists is that they're written as if the hard part is coming up with ideas. It isn't. The hard part is that Saturday arrives, nobody decided anything, and the default wins. What follows is sorted by how much effort each one takes to actually pull off, because that's the variable that decides whether it happens.
An hour, no preparation
- Walk a route you've never taken, starting from your own front door
- Cook breakfast for dinner
- Go to a playground on the other side of town
- Learn to skim stones properly
- Take twenty photos each of the same walk and compare them
- Read outside somewhere unusual
- Have a family dance party in the kitchen
- Draw a map of your neighbourhood from memory, then check it
- Make up a secret family handshake
- Go somewhere just to watch the sunset
Half a day, a bit of thought
- A hike short enough that nobody complains, with a defined snack point
- Swimming somewhere outdoors
- A museum with a specific thing you're going to see, not the whole museum
- Cycle somewhere and get the train back
- Build something outdoors - a den, a dam, a fire
- A scavenger hunt you wrote the night before
- Geocaching in a park none of you have explored
- A pottery, art, or cooking class booked for the afternoon
- Rent bikes somewhere new and explore for a few hours
- A farmers market trip followed by cooking whatever you bought
A full day or a weekend
- Camping, even one night, even in the garden
- A hut trip or a stay somewhere with no signal
- A day on the water - kayaks, a boat, a lake
- Visiting somewhere seasonal that's only good for three weeks a year
- A day trip built entirely around one thing the kids chose
- A road trip with one specific destination and no other plan
- Volunteering somewhere together for the day
- A themed day where every meal matches one country or decade
Rainy day, indoors
- Build an ambitious blanket fort and eat dinner in it
- Bake something none of you have made before
- Run an indoor scavenger hunt with clues written that morning
- Watch old home videos or photos together
- Learn a card game none of you already know
- Do a puzzle against the clock
- Cook a whole meal from a country you've never visited
- Turn the living room into an obstacle course for one afternoon
Once a year, seasonal
- Pick apples or pumpkins at the same farm every autumn
- Plant something in spring and check on it through the year
- Build a snowman or have a snowball fight on the first snow
- Watch fireworks from the same spot every summer
- Decorate for a holiday together, no rules on how
- Start a first-day-of-summer tradition, whatever that means to your family
- Take a family photo the same way every year
- Start the year by writing down one thing to try before it ends
The habit that makes the difference
Pick next weekend's thing this weekend, and put it on the shared family calendar as soon as you decide. The reason Saturdays default to nothing is that the decision gets made on Saturday morning, when everyone is tired and any option involving effort loses. Decided on Wednesday, the same option wins easily.
The second part is writing down what it needs at the same time as you decide. Not the night before. The swimming thing fails because nobody packed towels; the hike fails because the boots were in the wrong car. Deciding and preparing are two different moments and only one of them tends to happen.
For bigger, more aspirational ideas, see bucket list ideas. For the screen-free angle specifically, try family fun ideas that don't need a screen.
