Updated for 2023!
Family gifts are some of the best presents you can give! They encourage family time and bonding. Plus, they are often the most fun and make the most lasting memories for everyone in the household!
Here are some of my favorite family gifts to give!
Zoo Pass
I love zoos and animals and I think most people do! Zoos are great places for kids to run off some energy and for adults to enjoy a leisurely stroll (or not-so-leisurely power walk). There are new things to enjoy every time you go and zoos are definitely a great learning experience filled with many, many teachable moments.
We have had a zoo pass at our house for years. I love the fact that you can get into other zoos around the country for free or half price. We have planned vacations around where our zoo and museums passes could be used to get some free or inexpensive educational entertainment!
Aquarium Pass: Share the Love of Marine Life
Aquariums are another one of my favorite places to visit and my kids and grandkids love them too!
Aquariums are another fun and educational family activity. We were not lucky enough to have an aquarium closer than three or four hours away, so we have not had aquarium passes. However, I definitely love visiting aquariums when we travel!
Museum Pass: Educate in a Unique Way
Museums are another fun family activity. The idea of visiting museums may not be the top fun activity on the family’s to-do list, but they are so much fun!
I have always enjoyed introducing my children to a wide variety of activities so they have a broad view of what the world has to offer. Museums are a great way to introduce kids to new things in one nice climate-controlled area!
Plus…there is an almost endless variety of museums–art museums, children’s museums, science museums, history museums, museums of anthropology, and on and on.
Board Games–Share Your Memories with Old School Activities
Board games are another great way to spend family time together and you don’t even have to leave the house!
My kids enjoyed board games when they were little and I still enjoy them today! I think some of the most fun board games are the ones we played as children. Great bonding experiences are created by sharing these same board games with your children and telling them about your childhood.
Here are some of my personal favorites:
Give Future Fun
The gift of future fun is a gift that keeps on giving!!!
Gift cards are a great way to give them something to open on the special Holiday and allow them to have fun and make memories on another day! Miniature golf, movie tickets, painting, pottery, and themed restaurants are just some of the endless options of activities and fun that you can give.
Build-A-Bear is a fun family activity with little kids!
My family’s all-time favorite is Rainforest Cafe, but T-Rex is becoming a quick second favorite! These are not restaurants we have close to us, but ones we enjoy greatly! We have had many years of great memories at these fun, themed restaurants and I have every intention of making many, many more!
Chuck E Cheese is a local favorite of our grandkids and mine too! It’s where we celebrated many first days and last days of school and made amazing memories!
Any Activity with YOU–Your Time and Attention is Priceless!
Out of every gift idea we have suggested here, your time is the best gift you can give any of your family members or friends!
Time with you does not have to be expensive. It just needs to be one-on-one time with you and enjoying their company. Ideas are endless, but here are some of my favorite:
- Go for ice cream
- Bake cookies
- Have a “date” at the local park
- Volunteer at a local food bank
- Have a slumber party
- Do crafts together
- Have a dance party at home
- Do a pizza and movie night at home
Options are endless and you can use creativity to pick out what would be the most fun for you and your loved ones!
For other great gift ideas, check these out!
These are great recommendations! What a way to get out and enjoy time as a family. Thanks for the gift ideas.
I love giving gifts that can’t get thrown in the trash or Goodwilled!
These are wonderful gift ideas! I love gifting experiences as often as I can.
Me too! I figure experiences won’t end up at the Goodwill. lol
I love the activity gifts. There is no better gift you can give than the gift of time well spent.
I agree completely!
These are some great ideas for families who are are wanting experience gifts and not just more toys! I am always looking for ideas to share with extended family when they ask what my daughter wants for Christmas or birthdays. We also love the zoo and a season pass would be well used!
Yes! These are the greatest things!
This is a perfect list of gifts to get a family. We got a pass to a museum one year and it was great for rainy days when we didn’t know where else to go.
yes! I love museums for cold and rainy weather days!
Great ideas!! Nobody ever seems to gift tickets or places to go and I think that’s a wonderful idea. Material things come and go but the memories from experiences last a lifetime!
I couldn’t agree more! I love making endless memories with my kids!
Great ideas for Christmas gifts!
I agree! Almost endless fun!
I love these great ideas for family gifts! Passes are awesome!
I agree! One entire year’s worth of fun!
I love passes – I give them to the kids each year for our local Six Flags theme park.
That’s amazing! I did theme park passes with one of my adult kids last year and all my kids when they were little and still at home!
Perfect gift list for families! Thank you for sharing!
You are welcome! They are some of my favorite gifts!
Those are great gifts idea, especially this time of the year. I personally would love those attraction passes. We are a family of 6 and it get really expensive when we do an outing in parks or movies.
We could not have done near as much when my kids were little (we had seven) without passes to zoos and museums!!
With Covid this year, I am not sure about getting a museum pass. They are open but all the fun stuff that kids can touch is closed or put away. So, I think for this year our family gifts will include puzzles, games and lego.
That’s great! It’s still amazing family time and memories!
Great ideas!
Having a big family I so appreciate restaurant gift certificates and board games 🙂
Yes! That makes for such fun days together as a family!
I like the idea of giving someone an experience as a gift, rather than a trinket. Memories last forever… possessions often clutter our homes and our minds!
Yes! I even gave one niece a camera so she could take pictures of her own memories!
As my boys outgrew the toy stage of life, my favorite gifts were experiences. I think their favorite was the year I got King’s Dominion passes and then we went every other week all summer long. They didn’t care that we had Busch passes already. They loved the change of pace.
Absolutely! I also love the idea of one-on-one time with the kids using those tickets or passes together!
Yes!!! Love this! I wish someone bought all of the above for my family, but that’s a great idea for my niece and nephews, thank you!
I agree! Great gifts to make everyone happy!
These are great gift ideas. We received annual zoo passes one Christmas and loved it! To be able to go whenever we wanted for free for a year made all of our trips more relaxing because we weren’t trying to fit it all into one visit since we knew we could just come back next week. I love gifts like that, that just keep on giving!
Yes! To me, that’s the best about passes! You can do whatever you have time for and whatever you want and don’t have to feel rushed!
Great gift list! I am saving this for the grandkids and Hanukkah!
That’s amazing! That is my plan as well. I also think I’m going to open savings accounts for my grandkids and put money in there that I would have spent on toys and such.
I love activity gifts and these are fantastic! Thank you for sharing your great ideas!
Me too! One of my kids was always so hard to buy for and we started doing gifts of trips and activities with him and it grew from there!
We love gifting games to each other, we have to most fun playing together.
I love that! I love games and need to spend more time playing games with the family!!
We always made gingerbread houses with the kids when they were young. Great memories, great gift ideas.
We did that too! Gosh…it’s been so long ago! That sounds like an amazing thing to do this year!
And the passes for the zoos, museums, and aquariums will help the facilities out right now too! Christmas gift that gives on multiple sides!
Absolutely!
Such a great post for people with young children or even with teenagers. Great ideas for the hard to buy for families.
We have done the gift of travel for our teens for several years and I like it better than electronics!
We love receiving experiences and memberships as gifts in lieu of more toys or something that will sit around our house. These are great ideas!
I agree! Hopefully, memberships won’t collect dust!
I love the idea of gifts given to the entire family, not just each individual. And family-oriented gifts are definitely the most memorable! I love this post.
Thanks! I’ve done this with nieces and nephews before and I think it’s amazing (and easy)!
Great ideas! I personally love getting board games- helps build up my collection!
That’s awesome!!
I love these ideas! We have enough “stuff” and have talked about doing experiences and quality time instead this year. Thanks for the ideas!
I agree….I think most of us have too much “stuff!”
We love giving experiences as gifts. The museum and zoo pass is a great Christmas gift idea.
I love giving these types of gifts! I’ve seen too many of my Christmas presents for my grandkids in the Goodwill pile six months later!
These are great ideas of gifts for making memories! Nothing to outgrow, get lost, or broken. Lol
Yes! Definitely! (At least I hope no one can break the giraffe at the zoo! LOL)