Spring Break Activities for Families

Breaks from school are a great time to do things together as a family. Here are some activity ideas for your family to do during spring break:

Family Game Tournament

During spring break, my sister-in-law and I planned a game competition for adults and kids. We created two teams and set up stations with different games in the living room. We had Boggle, Wii Just Dance, basketball, foosball and several other fun activities. We organized teams so each member competed against others in their age group. Winners at each station throughout the tournament received one point for their team. We kept track of points to determine the winning teams, but we also kept individual scores and gave prizes to those winners. Kids and adults had a blast.

—Evie Lynne Palmer

Painting Rocks

Painting rocks is a fun activity for school-age kids. Look for smooth, flat rocks in riverbeds or streams, or buy them at a craft store. Have children wash the rocks, and when they’re dry, paint pictures or a few words on the stones, and then give them to others as gifts.

—Lee Ann Mancini

Get a Discussion Going

Don’t let spring break pass by without reading stories with your kids and discussing what you’ve read. Here are a few books to get you started:

• Opening Moves from “The Blackgaard Chronicles” series. After reading this book, discuss how people deal with unfair situations.
• Inferno in Tokyo from “The Imagination Station” series. With this book, you can delve into the difference that compassion makes.
• “Attack!” from the book Bible KidVentures: Stories of Danger and Courage. Use this story to spark conversation about how worship can be a heavenly weapon.

You can find discussions for over 1,000 other books at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books.

—Sheila Seifert

Name the Day

In my family, we established three specific days for spring break:

Others Day. On this day, everyone tried to help others in the family. Then as a family, we baked cookies for a friend, made cards for people in a care facility and volunteered at a local nonprofit.

Cleaning Day. One day was devoted to spring-cleaning. I made a list of tasks, and we tried to see how many tasks we could check off before the end of the day. Then my kids knew that no other large cleaning chores would be given for the rest of the week.

Outdoors Day. We spent the day exploring a local recreational area and having a picnic lunch. We also played outdoor games together.

—Anna Boyle

Historical Tea Party

I discovered a fun way to bring history to life for my kids. I told each of them to research one famous person from history because they were going to pretend to be that person. Then we put on a tea party, where we dressed up like our characters and told stories from their lives. We were not allowed to tell each other our names, but we pretended we were acquaintances who knew only a little about each other.

I chose Susanna Wesley, and my kids chose to be Mary Cassatt (the famous painter), Betsy Ross, Sojourner Truth and Clara Barton. When it was over, we revealed our identities. Some had been guessed already — and some were a real surprise!

—Hannah Maple