15 Fun Family Bonding Activities for any Age
Are your family nights becoming a little mundane? Are they feeling rather flat and tired? Or, perhaps you’re just thinking about starting a weekly family time and you’re not sure where to begin. Whichever camp you fall into, these Fun, Budget-Friendly, and Super Easy Family Bonding Ideas and Activities are for you!
I’ve purposefully chosen fun, out-of-the-box ideas that aren’t just your normal family movie night or games night. Not all these ideas will work for your family. You’ll need to take into account the ages, personalities, and needs of your own unique family, but there should be a number of activities within this list that work for your family.
1. Makeshift Water Slide
This one is super low-prep and loads of fun! Create a makeshift waterslide in your backyard! Grab some big sheets of plastic, some washing-up liquid, and the hose pipe and you’re all ready! To really go sliding, wear a trash bag over your swimwear and set your waterslide up on a slope!
This one is all about simply having fun and making memories together.
Remember to snap a few pictures for the family album or, even better, to stick on the fridge as a daily reminder of the fun times you’ve shared together.
2. Box Maze (or Castle!)
A super imaginative family time idea is creating something huge and impressive with just cardboard boxes! Whether you choose a castle, a car, or a giant maze, this one is lots of fun and requires the whole families input in it’s creation!
Perfect if you have a ton of amazon boxes around Christmas time or know someone who has recently moved house.
3. Design your own Family Board Game
A fun family bonding idea for slightly older kids, this one is great for helping your kids see your family as their team! Design and create your own family board game either completely from scratch, or by personalizing a common family game, like Monopoly.
Much like inside jokes and stories where ‘you had to be there’, this activity helps to create shared family experience.
4. Giant Family Portraits
This one is great if your family has a creative flair, but really it’s just as fun, in a different way, if you’re all terrible at art! Using big sheets of paper, draw around each others bodies and then have fun drawing, coloring, painting, or collaging to decorate them! Pin them to the doors of your bedrooms for a bit of lively decoration!
This is one of my favorite family bonding activities for families with a large age range!
5. Hide and Seek in the Forest
Hide and Seek is actually such a versatile family game. For older kids and teens, you could play it in a bigger area, like a forest, or try hide and seek in the dark, or sardines!
The aim of this family bonding activity is simply to have fun together and create joyful memories.
6. Volunteer Together
Helping others feels good, right? Why not enjoy that experience together as a family? Pick a cause you all really care about and get stuck in! This could be a local beach clean, picking up litter from a favorite beauty spot, helping at a soup kitchen, or planning a fundraiser.
This one reminds you all of your shared family values, as well as leaving you feeling great as you make a positive contribution to your community.
7. Bake something INCREDIBLE!
This is not just regular baking! Design a really amazing cake together as a family and then try to create it! This could be a really tall cake with multiple layers, a rainbow cake, or even an illusion cake. Illusion cakes look like such fun to create! Simply pick an object and try to make a cake that looks so much like that object you can fool someone with it!
Make sure to take lots of pictures to remember your triumph and all the fun you had along the way!
8. Escape Room
Escape Rooms are great if your family love to solve problems and work on puzzles.
Working together as a team and sharing ideas can really help you all grow even closer together during your family bonding time.
If you don’t have an Escape Room near you, or you’re saving money, you can buy various Escape Room Games on Etsy to play at home.
9. Family Race
Ever heard of Parkrun? It’s a free 5 K that happens on Saturdays in some areas. All about fun and inclusivity, the participants are encouraged to run, jog, or walk the race at their own pace and everyone receives a medal for taking part. It’s worth checking if you have one of these in your area, or something similar as they make great family bonding activities.
These types of fun runs are great as you all get high on endorphins together!
Create a fun family playlist to motivate you to keep going, and consider small snacks if you plan to walk rather than run the race!
10. Design an Obstacle Course
Obstacle courses don’t always have to be competitive or just built for those with athleticism. You could create a silly obstacle course with costumes to put on at various points and a funny dance to do before running back to the start. The options are endless!
The main idea here is to create something together as a team and enjoy that joint sense of pride, as well as a few giggles, as you watch each other attempt it!
11. Family Fort
Forts are not just for little kids! Anyone remember that episode of ‘Friends’ where Joey builds a fort?
As a Mom, I rather enjoy building forts with my kids, whether its a simple blanket fort, or a bigger structure in the forest. The older your family are, the bigger and more elaborate you can make your creation! Once you’ve finished you could even share a picnic in your fort!
Sharing ideas and working together as a team is great for family bonding!
12. Try a New Hobby Together
Learning a new skill together is a great way to build camaraderie and togetherness.
Pick something that none of you can do so you are all learning together. This could be a pottery class, archery, crocheting, skateboarding, origami, or anything really! You could book a class, watch a Youtube Tutorial, or go online to learn how to do your new thing. The thrill of learning something new and improving together is so good for your relationship.
13. Explore a New Place Together
Sharing new experiences together is a great way to grow or strengthen a bond with your family.
You don’t have to book an expensive holiday to explore somewhere new. Why not check out a new part of town you’ve not been to before, take a bus to a neighboring town, hike a new trail, or try our a new park.
Whatever you choose to do, you are experiencing it all for the first time together, and that grows your relationship.
14. Nature Time
There’s not much more relaxing than time spent in nature. It calms our soul and relaxes our mind, making us feel a million miles away from our problems. If life is hectic as a family just now, consider taking some time away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to enjoy time together in the countryside.
My family enjoy going on nature walks in the forest, sharing a picnic, or going on a scavenger hunt. You could also take time to take photographs, draw pictures, or paint in the countryside if you’re a creative family. Whatever you do, be sure you take time to slow down, smell the flowers, hear the gentle trickle of the stream, and watch the birds in the trees.
Relaxing together as a family reminds our kids that family time is a time to relax and enjoy simply being.
15. Family Talent Show
Over the years living in a family it can become easy to take one another for granted and no longer stop to appreciate all the unique talents of your mum, your husband, or your kids. That’s where this talent show idea comes in.
Why not set aside an evening for a Family Talent Show where you can remember all the cool talents each of you have as individuals?
You could even extend it to your wider family if you wanted. Give everybody in the family time to shine and be celebrated. Hopefully it will also help you all get back into the habit of appreciating each other more in everyday life too.
Family Bonding Ideas & Activities for Everyone
The more we prioritise building fun memories for our kids and the more we experience joy together, the closer we grow to one another.
I truly believe that family time is so precious and my hope is that you find these family bonding ideas and activities helpful as you work to build your family’s connections.
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