I’m a sucker for adventure. I love the thrill of visiting new places and the excitment of doing new things. Adventure doesn’t have to stop once you have a family. Quite the opposite in fact. Children tend to embrace adventure with open arms. As a family, we find many ways to be adventurous and I’m sharing some ideas below.
15 adventurous things to do with kids
1. Drive down a new street or take a different road home
If there is spare time on the way home from somewhere, the kids and I will often explore a new street. We’ve made many discoveries by doing this.
2. Go Geocaching
Geocaching combines the excitement of finding a new place and the thrill of hunting treasure. It brings together the perfect mix of technology and nature. It can be done any day, anytime and anywhere in the world. This adventure costs next to nothing and can take anywhere from 30 minutes or an entire day – you choose. It really is The Best Family Adventure. If you have a GPS, iPhone or GPS enabled smart phone, you MUST try it. Find more here: Geochaching — The Best Family Adventure.
3. Go outside when it’s night with a torch and explore
We recently went on a glow worm hunt which was a lot of fun, but even going outside your own home with a torch is exciting.
4. Find a hilly road to drive on
Okay, so this picture was taken on the steepest street in the world: Baldwin Street, Dunedin in New Zealand. But there are a lot of hilly roads to drive on everywhere, and kids think it’s awesome.
5. Visit a farm and pick your own fruit or vegetables
This fun activity is also educational, where children can learn where food comes from. If you’re visiting Queensland, the Strawberry Fields on the Sunshine Coast provide a fantastic family fun day.
6. Look at the stars or watch a sunset
It’s a simple thing to do. Going outside to look at the stars, or watching a sunset is a magical experience.
7. Have a sleep out in the family room
This doesn’t have to be for the entire night. Sometimes when we have the cousins over, they sleep in the lounge until later, when the parents carry the children to bed.
8. Find a new park out of town
Find a park you haven’t visited before. It might even become a family favourite.
9. Go hiking or bush walking
Even when our children were young, Blu and I went hiking and bush walking with them. If you invest in a good child backpack, it’s possible to do many bush walks with children.
10. Visit an airport
This is a favourite activity Dad likes to do with our kids. He simply drives out to our local airport, and from the car, the children watch the planes take off and land.
11. Catch or watch a train
Trains are a source of fascination for our children. We watch trains, ride on them, and even went on a steam train adventure.
12. Eat an early dinner outside
While I’m not necessarily recommending children should eat lying down (HA!) eating outside is a fun treat. My kids watched the clouds while eating chicken burgers. As a family, we’ve also eaten a picnic dinner at a park and done plenty of finger food nights.
13. Theme Day
Pick a theme and fill a day with as many themed things as you can. For example, you may like to find all your toy dinosaurs, visit a museum, read a dinosaur book and even make dinosaur cupcakes.
14. Have a Family Quest
This can be anything like collecting shells, taking a picture at every “big” landmarks you come across (like the Big Pineapple or the Big Banana), or finding street names for every one in your family.
15. Family Holidays
Nothing says adventure like a family holiday. We plan one at least every year.
38 Comments
Jenny
June 17, 2011 at 2:56 pmhehe I read the title of the post and thought I should suggest geocaching…You can also do it with any gps enabled smartphone (HTC etc), not just the iphone.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 17, 2011 at 3:00 pmI didn’t know that! That’s awesome! Thanks Jenny! We LOVE geochching!
Angie
June 17, 2011 at 3:01 pmThat looks like the park I was at this morning
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 17, 2011 at 5:45 pmIt was a park in Warwick. A gogeous park!
Christie-Childhood 101
June 17, 2011 at 3:25 pmWe love spontaneous breakfast picnics – outside in our PJs if the weather is good or spread out on the big bed if we need to be indoors. Maybe not an adventure, but good family fun 🙂
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 17, 2011 at 5:48 pmI think that is an adventure! It’s a very exciting idea. Thanks Christie, we’ll have to try that one.
Deb
June 17, 2011 at 3:45 pmStrawberry fields has been on my to do list 4 years running and I told dh recently this year it happens!!
I did not know geocaching had taken off here so will look into that (just got my first smartphone this week).
a new one for us since we moved 2 blocks away from good friends – we tend to stay quite late when we go for dinner (like between 9:30-11pm!) and walk home with our girls (6 1/2 and almost 8) – the first time was amazing – it is so different walking in your neighbourhood at night, all the stars, animal noises, possums on the phone lines etc. – and then we just pray they don’t wake up early ; )
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 17, 2011 at 5:49 pmAw, Deb, that sounds like a heap of fun. And yes, look into geocaching, it’s fantastic fun.
Lorna d'Entremont
June 17, 2011 at 9:37 pmKelly, I always enjoy your posts. This one on adventurous things to do with kids is wonderful! Love your suggestions, photos, and uplifting comments. I am sure overwhelmed parents fell much better after a visit to your site.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 24, 2011 at 6:02 pmDearn Lorna. Thank you so much for SUCH a lovely comment. Just thank you!
Fi @ Calm Blue Ocean
June 18, 2011 at 6:58 pmLove this post Kelly!
I am always on the look out for interesting letterboxes ever since the day we posted a letter on the way home from child care, ended up coming a different way home and found a big wagon wheel that someone had made into a letterbox.
The other day on our way to the cake decorating shop we found one that was in the shape of a cat, and another on designed to look like Ned Kelly.
It turns an otherwise unexciting car trip into a bit of an adventure trying to find something out of the ordinary.
Was telling hubby about geocaching the other day and we put it on our list of things to try when the kids are a little bit older. It sounds like such fun!
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 24, 2011 at 6:03 pmFi, that is SUCH a fun idea about the letterboxes! Such a perfect “Quest”
Bbeingcool
June 19, 2011 at 3:12 pmWow – this is a GREAT list! Just in time for holidays….
I am going to Google Geocaching RIGHT NOW!
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 24, 2011 at 6:09 pmGeochching is fantastic! I found it a bit confusing to start up so you may like to read my first post about it for more of a explanation. http://beafunmum.com/2010/05/family-fun-geocaching/
Deb
June 19, 2011 at 8:52 pmI love the idea of being adventurous. There are some things here we do and other great ideas, I just hadn’t thought of them as ‘adventures’ before.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 24, 2011 at 6:13 pmI love the idea of adventure too, and it’s amazing how many adventurous things we do when we think about it!
Sheri
June 20, 2011 at 8:47 amLove these simple but fun ideas, Kelly! We like to do similar things in our family-as you know. 🙂 Going to be sharing a link to this article on my blog this week. xo
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 24, 2011 at 6:15 pmThanks Sheri. Wish we lived closer…in the same country would be a good start! LOL. If I’m ever over there, I’ll look you up. x
Sheri
June 25, 2011 at 8:58 amI too wish we lived closer–because surely our families would have blast together! Tennessee has some wonderful places you would love to see. (And of course there are many other areas of our country that are great too.) If I ever get to Australia–I will do the same. 🙂
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June 23, 2011 at 5:34 am[…] Be a fun mum – 15 Adventurous Things To Do With Kids […]
Belinda
June 23, 2011 at 2:21 pmI love these ideas! I spend so much of my time with my son telling him what not to do presently and am always on the lookout for something to ‘inspire’ us! Love it!
http://tropicaltreehouse.blogspot.com/
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 24, 2011 at 6:17 pmHi Belinda. So glad you’re here and enjoy the post. Thanks for leaving a link to yours too. It’s great! I tried to leave a comment but it wouldn’t let me for some reason. I so want to make that activity board for my son! Might be a project for this weekend!
Belinda
June 27, 2011 at 1:45 pmThanks Kelly, I don’t know what was wrong with the comments section but it seems OK again now 🙂 We started making an activity board on the weekend and it’s really quite fun coming up with great ideas for the board. I’ll post a pic when done. Did you start on yours?
Love the blog!
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María
June 30, 2011 at 12:29 amDear Kelly I love your blog. We had a dinosurs day. http://tocreatemoments.blogspot.com/2011/03/week-6-dinosaur-theme-day.html
My next thing is the night out at the family room. Thanks for sharing your brilliant ideas.
Maria.
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
June 30, 2011 at 9:28 pmHi Maria
Thank you so much for taking the time to say hi. I absolutely ADORE your post! Thanks for sharing it with me.
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December 18, 2011 at 12:18 pmamazing ideas..
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Erin Crisante
January 15, 2012 at 5:04 pmHi Kelly
I love your site, we’ve done lots of these activities but reading this has reminded me of the importance of keeping it up. My kids are now 6 & 8 & we’ve become slack, so Thank you for a terrific blog.
Cheers Erin (Wights Mtn)
Kelly Be A Fun Mum
January 15, 2012 at 7:24 pmHi Erin!
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment. You’re in a lovely part of the world (and not far from me!). Lot’s of fun things to explore. We often loved driving up Clear Mountain. It’s only a short drive but the view from the top is GORGEOUS!
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