Eight (Plus Forty-Four) Ideas for Uncommon Family Adventures

We all love our families, but sometimes life gets in the way of really acting like it. We get busy with the day today responsibilities of life. But what if you could make lemons out of the lemonaid of day to day life? 52 Uncommon Family Adventures: Simple and Creative Ideas for Making Lifelong Memories is a great resource to help you squeeze in a little extra family fun.

How to Get the Most From Your Family Time

Before we can delve into the uncommon family adventures, we need to pause long enough to think about how we spend time with our families. It’s a great idea to spend time with your kids, but what if you could make it even more meaningful?

Many of you may have heard of the 5 Love Languages. According to The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively, there are 5 basic ways that you can give and receive love–Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Most of us respond best to 1 or 2 of these Love Languages.

Being intentional with your family time means that you are connecting in ways that make your family members feel most loved. If you are doing something fun together, but it doesn’t correlate to what makes them feel most loved, it won’t have as much of an impact. That doesn’t mean that you should only do activities that fall under their preferred Loved Language; it does mean that you need to be intentional about including activities that incorporate their Love Language more often. For example, if your child’s Love Language is gifts, make sure to include small mementos and souvenirs from your adventures together. For more specifics about the Love Languages, check out brief intro in 52 Uncommon Family Adventures: Simple and Creative Ideas for Making Lifelong Memories, or check out The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively.

Eight Uncommon Family Adventures

In true family fashion, I asked my kids which thing activities in 52 Uncommon Family Adventures: Simple and Creative Ideas for Making Lifelong Memories sounded most interesting to them. (By the way, when you can get 3 kids, aged 12, 8, and 6 to agree on something, that’s a great feat! Kudos to the authors for being able to suggest things that appeal to boys and girls of different ages!)

Each activity in the book is marked to show which Love Language it correlates with best, how much time commitment is involved, the cost, and the locale. Here is the list of things we decided to do together…

A Library Scavenger Hunt–Great for getting your kids Into reading.
Family Nerf War–You are never to old to join in Nerf battle! (Just make sure to use safety goggles!)
Speed Gaming–Playing shortened versions of a bunch of your favorite games.
Blue Day–Celebrate all things blue, including blueberries, chicken cordon bleu, “Blue Suede Shoes,” and more!
Camera Art–Everyone gets a camera to see what they can create!
Photobombing–Mess up the photos in your house–in non-permanent ways, of course!
Something New–Plan a day going new places and doing things you have never done before.
Do It In a Minute–Similar to Minute to Win It games.
Create a Time Capsule–Make a family time capsule to be opened up in 10-15 years so that you can see how a day in the life of your family has changed over time.

If these sound interesting, make sure you check out 52 Uncommon Family Adventures: Simple and Creative Ideas for Making Lifelong Memories to get all the details and find more activities.

Other Things I Like About 52

Another thing that I loved about 52 Uncommon Family Adventures: Simple and Creative Ideas for Making Lifelong Memories is that each uncommon family adventure included a “That Reminds Me” section that helps them connect the adventure to their everyday life. There is also a Family Devotion and a “Language of the Day” section that connects the adventure to the love language that it corresponds with. You can also look up adventures by love language, locale, and cost.